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AN  OLD  CASTLE 
AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK        BOSTON    •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA    ■    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON    •    BOMBAY    •    CALCUTTA 

MELBOURNE 

THE   MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA.  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


A  N 

OLD  CASTLE 


AND   OTHER   ESSAYS 


BY 

C.    T.     WINCHESTER 

LATE   PROFESSOR   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE   IN 
WESLEYAN    UNIVERSITY 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

1922 

All  right*  rturxtd 


PRINTED   IN   THE  UNITED  STATES   OF  AMERICA 


Copyright,  1933, 
Br  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  printed.     Published  November,  1922. 


»   , 


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as 

CD 


MEN  LIVE  AFTER  THEIR  DEATH, — THEY  LIVE  NOT 
ONLY  IN  THEIR  WRITINGS  OR  THEIR  CHRONICLED 
HISTORY,  BUT  STILL  MORE  IN  THAT  &ypa<jx>s  A""7M*f 
EXHIBITED  IN  A  SCHOOL  OF  PUPILS  WHO  TRACB 
THBIR   MORAL   PARENTAGE  TO  THEM 

NEWMAN 


32851 


PREFACE 

Seldom  is  it  the  teacher's  lot  to  have  any  of  his  work 
perpetuated  in  lasting  literary  form.  But  Professor  Win- 
chester's students  will  remember  how  the  work  in  the  class- 
room led  up  to  finished  summary  lectures.  They  developed 
out  of  the  rich  autumn  mould  of  his  acquisitions,  year  after 
year,1  and  showed  us  best  of  all  how  thorough  and  thought- 
ful study  had  enabled  him  to  "see  into  the  life  of  things." 
In  these  talks  to  students  lay  the  origins  of  the  public  lec- 
tures which  charmed  and  enlightened  a  far  more  widely 
ranging  audience.  Even  the  latter,  Professor  Winchester 
rarely  published.  Therefore  certain  typical  examples,  rep- 
resentative both  of  his  power  as  a  teacher  and  his  appeal 
as  a  lecturer,  it  has  now  seemed  best  to  give  to  the  world. 
"Art,"  once  wrote  their  author,  "is  the  only  way  the  indi- 
vidual has  of  perpetuating  his  personality."  In  this  way 
these  papers  are  not  alone  of  intrinsic  value  but  fitly 
memorial. 

Professor  Winchester  admirably  illustrated  his  own  ideal 
of  a  critic, — one  who  could  "quicken  your  feeling  for  what 
is  essential  and  characteristic  in  an  author's  work."  Hun- 
dreds can  testify  to  the  success  with  which  he  did  this  in 
the  lecture-room  or  through  the  printed  page.  The  range 
of  these  essays  indicates  in  some  measure  the  catholicity  of 
his  taste  and  the  scope  of  his  powers  of  literary  apprecia- 
tion. He  was  always,  I  think,  especially  interested  in  the 
man  behind  the  book.  Interest  in  character  and  in  the  work 
as  an  index  to  character  was  what  led  him  into  a  method  of 
criticism    pronouncedly    biographical.      It   was   because    he 

1  The  actual  writing  of  them  out  Profeasor  Wincheiter  often  did  very 
quickly;  he  told  the  editor  that  the  Shakespeare  lecture  he  thought  hit  best, 
the  Antuny  and  Cleopatra,  wai  dashed  oft  at  one  sitting  of  a  single  after- 
noon. 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

brought  so  broad  and  deep  and  wise  an  experience  of  life 
to  his  reading  that  he  found  so  much  there.  Literature  in 
turn  increased  his  own  understanding  of  human  nature,  and 
he  made  it  the  means  of  conveying  that  knowledge  to  others. 
Vivid  and  dear  memories  flash  into  the  minds  of  many  of 
us  as  we  read  these  pages.  We  see  that  dignified  figure 
come  quietly  into  the  crowded  lecture-hall  to  make  Shake- 
speare or  Wordsworth  or  Burns  live  for  us  as  never  before. 
Upon  all  of  us  in  some  way  this  man  made  an  indelible  im- 
pression. I  myself  shall  never  forget  Professor  Winches- 
ter's reading  and  interpretation  of  the  Ode  to  Duty.  He 
brought  out  the  impressiveness  of  the  truth  it  teaches  with 
such  hushing  conviction.  Another  friend  spoke  of  the  way 
in  which  he  handled  his  books,  which  was  characteristic, 
and  suggestive  of  his  bearing  toward  literature  in  the  large. 
For,  being  one  of  the  most  genuinely  modest  of  men, — 
judicial  as  was  his  criticism, — he  always  approached  great 
works  of  literature  with  a  very  winning  kind  of  respect. 
The  loving  way  in  which  he  taught  literature,  in  itself, 
opened  many  a  man's  eyes.  As  has  been  well  said,  "he 
taught  his  students  to  think  while  feeling,  and  to  feel  while 
thinking,  and  he  taught  them  to  love  literature  while  teach- 
ing them  to  know  it."  And  whatever  his  audience,  he 
always  made  the  individuals  that  composed  it  feel  that  they 
were  one  with  him  in  knowledge,  insight,  and  appreciation. 
Or  perhaps  our  fondest  memory  may  be  of  Professor  Win- 
chester in  the  seminar  where  his  way  of  welcoming  every 
man's  point  of  view,  and  yet  bringing  all  the  wandering 
question  and  comment  round  to  some  definite  conclusion  in 
the  end  was  a  marvel  of  generalship  in  teaching.  And  how 
we  came  to  watch  for  the  glint  of  humor  in  his  eye  I — sign 
of  a  gift  that  kept  his  view  of  life  wholesome,  and  en- 
livened many  a  page  as  well  as  many  an  hour.  Or  yet 
again  we  may  best  remember  him  as  he  conducted  morning 
prayers  at  chapel,  for  religion  was  deep  and  essential  in 
the  man.  He  had  the  poet's  love  for  beauty,  and  a  sunni- 
ness  of  outlook  upon  life,  but  he  had  the  poet's  aspiration 
as  well;  he  felt  with  distinguishing  force  "how  near  to  good 


PREFACE  ix 

is  what  is  fair";  his  predilection  for  Milton  in  Comus,  for 
Wordsworth,  Ruskin,  Browning,  was  evidence  of  a  trait  in 
himself  which  made  the  desire  of  beauty  lead  to  spiritual 
things. 

More  friends  than  any  but  the  editor  can  realize  have 
materially  contributed  toward  the  bringing  out  of  this  book. 
Of  course  it  would  never  have  been  at  all  but  for  the  gen- 
erous devotion  of  her  who  was  always  nearest  and  dearest 
to  him.  We  are  especially  fortunate  in  having  the  Intro- 
duction written  by  one  whose  peculiarly  rich  experience  of 
life  and  fine  cultural  sense  enabled  him  to  place  Professor 
Winchester  among  critics  of  literature,  the  more  justly  for 
being  free  of  the  bias  of  personal  acquaintance.  And  col- 
laboration has  been  far-reaching.  It  has  extended  all  the 
way  from  former  students  who  have  helped  in  selection, 
colleagues,  or  professors  in  other  colleges,  who  have  given 
us  the  benefit  of  their  advice  or  knowledge  or  service  in 
proof-reading,  even  to  utter  strangers  who  have  taken  upon 
themselves  irksome  tasks  merely  out  of  sympathy  with  our 
endeavor.  Professor  Winchester's  was  just  the  spirit  to 
appreciate  such  ministration  of  friendliness,  and  the  book 
stands  as  witness  to  the  generous  aid  and  kindly  co-opera- 
tion of  all.  Let  us  inscribe  it  as  it  thus  fitly  goes  forth  fos- 
tered by  manifold  friendship: 

To  all  those  who  were  his  students 

in  any  sort 

and  are  ever  his  friends. 

Louis  Bliss  Gillet. 
22  February,  1922. 


NOTE 

All  the  papers  here  collected  are  now  printed  for  the 
first  time  except  those  on  Ruskin,  Clough,  and  Bronson  Al- 
cott.  The  latter  are  reprinted  through  the  courtesy  of  the 
Methodist  Review,  where  they  appeared  in  the  numbers  for 
March  1900,  September  1906,  and  July  19 19,  respec- 
tively. No  manuscript  has  been  found  of  Professor  Win- 
chester's earliest  and  repeatedly  called  for  *  lecture,  An  Eve- 
ning in  London  a  Hundred  Yean  Ago.  Fewer  examples  of 
his  lectures  on  the  writers  between  1789  and  1832  have  been 
included,  though  Memories  of  the  English  Lakes  was 
among  the  most  popular,  because  of  his  books  dealing  with 
this  period,  Wordsworth:  How  to  Know  Him,  and  A  Group 
of  English  Essayists.  A  Bibliography  of  nearly  all  his  pub- 
lished writings  will  be  found  in  the  Memorial  issued  by 
Wesleyan  University  in  192 1,  the  year  following  his  death. 
Of  course  none  of  the  following  papers,  except  the  three 
previously  printed,  received  the  benefit  of  Professor  Win- 
chester's revision  for  publication.  But  they  are  perhaps 
as  interesting  in  their  present  state  since,  being  in  practically 
the  form  in  which  they  were  delivered,  they  show  in  what 
pure  English  and  in  what  a  finished  style  it  was  natural  for 
their  author  to  speak.  The  vignette  on  the  title-page  is  a 
miniature  reproduction  of  an  old  crayon  drawing  of  Ludlow 
Castle  by  Mrs.  Winchester, — one  of  a  set  which  in  the  early 
days  illustrated,  and,  as  Professor  Winchester  was  fond  of 
telling  his  friends,  greatly  increased  the  popularity  of  his 
lecture.  The  texts  of  the  Cambridge  Editions  published  by 
Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  have  been  used  for  the 
longer  quotations  from  the  poets.    A  British  custom  of  using 

'Professor  Winchester  told  the  editor  in   1908  that  he  supposed  he  had 
delivered  the  companion   lecture,  An  Old  Cattle,  three  hundred  times. 

xi 


xii  NOTE 

single  quotation  marks  to  indicate  inexact  or  slightly  appro- 
priated quotations  has  been  followed;  and  words  and 
phrases  that  Professor  Winchester  in  lecturing  inserted  for 
any  reason  into  quoted  texts  are  set  off  in  brackets.  The 
footnotes,  unless  signed  by  initials  in  brackets,  are  the  au- 
thor's own. 

L.  B.  G. 


INTRODUCTION 

I  am  told  that  our  Oxford  Professor  of  English  Litera- 
ture, Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  once  said:  "Of  all  the  men  I 
have  met  in  America  the  most  interesting  was  a  man  by 
the  name  of  Winchester,  from  a  place  I  never  heard  of 
called  Wesleyan."  I  too  had  never  heard  of  Winchester 
or  Wesleyan  till  I  was  introduced  to  both  through  a  friend 
during  my  first  visit  to  America  in  1920,  about  a  month 
after  Winchester's  death. 

"Interesting"  is  not  the  first  epithet  we  generally  apply 
to  scholars  or  dons.  Few  teachers  make  even  their  teaching 
interesting.  At  all  events,  after  the  customary  years  in  an 
English  Public  School  and  the  greatest  of  our  Universities, 
I  remember  only  one  who  taught  me  anything  interesting — 
anything  vital,  anything  that  touched  my  life.  I  suppose  it 
is  its  effect  upon  life  that  is  the  test  of  teaching,  and  that  is 
why  the  teacher  is  so  much  more  important  than  the  thing 
taught  that  the  subject  does  not  really  matter  in  com- 
parison. It  is  because  so  few  Professors  and  dons  have 
this  influence  upon  life,  or  have  even  much  intimacy  with 
life,  that  so  few  are  called  interesting. 

With  distant  but  reverent  admiration  I  think  of  the 
verbal  scholar,  the  emendator  of  classic  texts,  the  authority 
upon  minute  particles  of  speech,  like  the  honoured  corpse 
at  the  Grammarian's  Funeral,  of  whom  it  was  written, 

This  man  decided  not  to  Live  but  Know. 

By  all  means  let  us  rejoice  at  assisting  in  a  grammarian's 
funeral — the  elevated  funeral  upon  the  mountain  top.  But 
for  interest  we  must  go  to  life — the  life  common  to  all  who 
pass  from  darkness  into  darkness  through  this  dimly  torch- 
lit  world. 

xiii 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

It  might  be  thought  an  easy  matter  to  make  the  teach- 
ing of  literature  interesting;  for  literature  is  closely  con- 
nected with  life;  more  closely  than  language,  and  quite  as 
closely  as  history.  Yet  I  believe  English  literature  to  be 
just  the  most  difficult  of  all  subjects  to  teach.  So  far  as 
merely  getting  knowledge  into  the  pupils'  heads  goes,  it 
is  far  easier  to  make  them  learn  Euclid  or  arithmetic  or  the 
Greek  verbs.  About  all  literature  there  is  something  in- 
tangible and  indefinite  as  compared  with  other  studies  like 
mathematics  or  physical  science ;  and  to  an  English-speaking 
student  English  literature  appears  so  simple  that  it  may 
be  taken  as  a  kind  of  relaxation,  but  I  am  old-fashioned  and 
wise  enough  to  know  that  good  teaching  draws  a  very 
sharp  line  between  work  and  play.  Besides,  the  teaching  of 
most  literature  is  inextricably  complicated  by  an  element 
which  lurks  in  it  as  in  all  the  arts,  and  can  never  be  taught 
at  all — the  incalculable  element  of  beauty.  Everything  else 
can  be  taught  up  to  a  certain  point,  either  by  sympathetic 
understanding  or  by  the  ancient  method  of  cruelty.  But  no 
power  on  earth  or  in  heaven  can  drive  the  perception  of 
beauty  into  a  head  which  has  it  not. 

I  once  heard  a  lecturer  begin  by  calling  upon  his  audi- 
ence "to  join  him  in  culling  a  few  choice  and  fragrant  flowers 
from  the  Shakespearian  fields."  Refusing  to  cull,  I  heard 
no  more;  for  even  to  those  who  know  what  beauty  is,  a 
selection  of  beauties  grows  as  tedious  as  a  succession  of 
anecdotes  or  jokes.  If  you  get  hold  of  a  whole  volume 
of  Punch,  you  may  think  you  are  going  to  have  a  really 
good  time,  but  within  ten  minutes  you  are  bored  so  stiff 
that  you  long  for  Paradise  Lost  or  the  Differential  Calculus 
or  anything  that  is  no  joke.  In  the  same  way  we  soon 
sicken  of  special  beauties  that  critics  point  out  for  our  ad- 
miration, as  Swinburne,  for  instance,  sometimes  did  in  his 
literary  rhapsodies.  That  was  not  Professor  Winchester's 
way.  He  presents  us  with  no  tempting  tit-bits.  He  culls 
no  pretty  flowers.  He  does  not  pick  the  phrase,  but  leaves 
us  to  find  it  where  it  grew.     Literature  to  him  was  no 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

collection  of  labeled  specimens,  but  a  living  thing,  bounte- 
ous as  nature.  In  an  address  of  1 9 19,  he  truly  said  (and 
in  certain  precious  circles  it  would  require  some  courage 
to  say  it), — "No  really  good  literature  was  ever  born  of 
merely  aesthetic  impulse." 

Some  literary  critics  yield  to  another  temptation — the 
temptation  of  running  off  into  paradoxes  and  whimsies  be- 
cause the  highroad  of  judgment  seems  so  tame  and  well- 
trodden.  One  wasted  part  of  genius  so  valuable  to  man- 
kind in  proving  that  the  Odyssey  was  written  by  a  girl,  as 
though  that  mattered;  another  that  Dante's  Beatrice  was 
a  species  of  theology;  another  that  Shakespeare  wrote  the 
Sonnets  for  fun  or  hire.  A  good  many  have  wasted  time 
(which,  certainly,  can  have  been  of  little  value)  in  demon- 
strating that  Bacon  was  Shakespeare,  and  a  large  number 
have  set  out  to  prove  that  one  great  writer  is  greater  than 
another  great  writer,  as  though  they  could  weigh  genius 
by  Apothecaries'  Weight.  From  all  these  vagaries  and 
mare's-nesting  excursions  Winchester  was  mercifully  pre- 
served by  a  certain  "horse  sense."  Even  Matthew  Arnold 
was  hardly  a  saner  critic.  He  had  no  shrinking  fear  of 
sanity,  no  pernickety  hesitation  in  permitting  his  judgment 
to  coincide  with  the  judgment  of  the  "Orbis  Terrarum." 
There  are  points  in  which  I  do  not  agree  with  him.  I 
think  he  is  inclined  to  insist  too  much  upon  the  definitely 
moral  teaching  of  great  literature.  In  speaking  of  Antony 
and  Cleopatra,  for  instance,  I  should  not  myself  describe 
their  relation  as  "sin."  Their  passion  was  too  superb, 
their  tragedy  too  overwhelming  for  the  pulpit  word.  Again, 
I  think  Winchester  too  easily  forgives  Henry  V  for  his 
callous  betrayal  of  Falstaff,  to  me  the  greatest  of  all 
Shakespeare's  creations.  I  do  not  agree  that  As  You 
Like  It  is  the  best  of  the  comedies.  I  doubt  if  it  is  a  good 
acting  comedy  at  all,  though  the  charm  of  its  language  and 
of  the  characters  enthralls  us.  Still  less  do  I  agree  that 
Sterne  is  "s;ntimentalism  incarnate."  But  these  are  small 
and  possibly  private  objections.     Almost  without  exception, 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

Winchester  keeps  the  broad  highway  of  judgment.  "Se- 
curus  judicat."  It  is  proverbially  difficult  to  give  a  personal 
and  individual  touch  to  widely  accepted  themes.  "Difficile 
est  proprie  communia  dicere." 

Let  us  take  two  examples  of  his  criticism  to  illustrate 
both  his  common  sense  and  his  individuality.  It  is  obvious 
from  all  his  work  that  he  felt  the  keenest  delight  in  the 
Elizabethan  and  nineteenth  century  poets.  In  them  he 
found  the  emotion  and  the  beauty  of  expression  that  he 
most  required  in  literature.  Yet,  when  we  are  confronted 
with  the  modern  school  which  regards  imagery  alone  as 
constituting  poetry,  and  in  reading  a  poet  takes  no  account 
of  the  intention,  design,  or  "architecture"  of  the  poem,  but 
marks  only  the  lines  of  images,  similes,  metaphors,  or 
picturesque  words,  how  encouraging  it  is  for  us  who  believe 
that  these  beautiful  things  should  be  but  the  ornaments 
and  decorations  of  a  great  structure  to  come  upon  such 
a  passage  as  this: 

For  my  part,  I  should  certainly  prefer  the  poetry  of  the  early 
nineteenth  century  to  the  poetry  of  the  early  eighteenth  century; 
and  yet,  in  these  days  when  so  much  stress  is  laid  upon  the  picturesque, 
the  suggestive,  or  even  the  mere  musical  functions  of  poetry, — when 
Mr.  Addington  Symonds  thinks  Shelley  has  realized  the  miracle  of 
"making  words  altogether  detached  from  any  meaning  the  substance 
of  a  new  ethereal  music," — I  say  it  is  not  altogether  unpleasant  to 
take  up  this  old-fashioned  verse  whose  first  charm  is  clear  and  pithy 
meaning.  And  the  matter  of  which  this  poetry  is  made  up,  if  it  be 
neither  novel  nor  moving,  has  at  least  that  first  mark  of  classic 
literature,  universality. 

And  when  critics  plague  us  with  ecstasy  over  the  beauties 
of  "poetic  prose,"  or  try  to  carry  us  away  upon  the  glory 
of  rolling  periods  and  sounding  rhetoric,  what  a  city  of 
refuge  from  them  we  may  find  in  this  passage  about  prose 
style  in  the  essay  upon  my  own  favorite  writer,  Jonathan 
Swift: 

Language  to  Swift  was  simply  the  vehicle  of  thought.  No 
English  writing  better  combines  the  three  virtues  of  clearness,  sim- 
plicity, vigor.    "Proper  words  in  proper  places"  is  his  curt  definition 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

of  style.  Admiration  for  style  apart  from  the  meaning  beneath  it 
he  would  have  considered  the  mark  of  mere  literary  preciosity, — as 
it  usually  is.  It  is  true  indeed  that  the  greatest  masters  of  modern 
prose  have  at  their  command  felicities  of  arrangement  and  cadence, 
and  a  subtle  use  of  the  suggestive  power  of  words,  by  means  of 
which  the}'  can  convey  their  thought  not  only  with  all  its  flexures 
of  meaning  but  with  all  its  delicate  nimbus  of  emotion.  But  Swift 
needed  no  such  niceties,  for  there  was  no  subtlety  or  delicacy  in  his 
nature.  Literary  elaboration  always  seemed  to  him  to  imply  artifice 
or  pedantry. 

This  quiet  good  sense,  as  solid  and  assured  as  Johnson's 
own,  lies  at  the  foundation  of  Winchester's  excellence  as  a 
critic.  But,  above  that,  rose  his  fine  sympathy  with  noble 
emotion,  and  that  incommunicable  sense  of  beauty  of  which 
we  spoke.  He  possessed  by  birth,  and  he  retained,  a 
passionate  love  of  the  best  literature;  and  I  think  it  must 
be  hard  to  retain  such  a  passion  for  the  subject  that  a 
man  teaches.  Literature  to  him  was  part  of  life,  or  rather 
it  was  life  itself  as  viewed  in  human  thought.  It  was  the 
description  and  interpretation,  often  the  inspiration,  of 
life.  As  he  said  in  his  speech  at  the  dinner  given  in  his 
honor  less  than  a  year  before  he  died: 

Literature  is  the  best  thought  that  has  been  touched  and  vitalized 
with  emotion  and  uttered  in  a  manner  of  lasting  charm.  Thus 
defined,  literature  is  obviously  the  best  interpreter  of  life — the  life 
of  the  individual  man  and  the  life  of  historical  periods.  For  the 
temper  of  a  man  depends  not  merely  nor  principally  upon  what  he 
thinks,  but  upon  what  he  feels;  the  character  of  an  age  depends  not 
merely  upon  its  permanent  intellectual  qualities,  but  upon  its  dom- 
inant tone  of  feeling.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  if  we  wish  to 
know  any  life  outside  the  little  circle  of  our  own  personal  acquain- 
tance, we  must  know  it  largely  through  books. 

For  literature  under  this  definition  his  love,  as  I  said, 
remained  unshaken,  in  spite  of  all  the  weariness  and  repeti- 
tion implied  in  a  Professor's  labor.  His  appreciation  was 
inspired  by  an  innate  sense  of  beauty,  and  guided  by  an 
imperturbable  sanity.  By  his  historic  imagination,  as  seen 
in  An  Old  Castle,  he  was  able  to  connect  the  literature  of 
any   age   with   its  contemporary   world,    and   by   his   wide 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

tolerance,  in  matters  of  ordinary  behavior  as  well  as  in 
questions  of  literary  taste  (as  seen  in  his  essays  upon  Swift 
and  Burns),  he  escaped  the  snares  of  seclusiveness  and 
preciosity.  But,  above  all,  it  was  his  insistence  upon  the 
unity  of  life  with  literature  that  gave  his  writing  and  his 
teaching  their  finest  value.  For  these  reasons  I  can  well 
understand  what  a  radiant  experience  it  must  have  been 
for  the  young  to  come  under  his  influence;  and  I  can  well 
understand  what  a  mature  scholar  meant  by  calling  him  the 
most  interesting  man  he  had  met  in  America. 

Henry  W.  Nevinson. 
London,  Oct.  i,  192 1. 


CONTENTS 


PAbB 


Introduction  by  Henry  W.  Nevinson xiii 

An  Old  Castle i 

As  You  Like  It 36 

Antony  and  Cleopatra 64 

The  Winter's  Tale 91 

Shakespeare  the  Man 115 

The  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Queen  Anne:  General 

Characteristics  of  the  Age 133 

The  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Queen  Anne:  Politics, 

Parties,  and  Persons 157 

The  Life  of  Jonathan  Swift 181 

Robert  Burns 237 

John   Ruskin 267 

Browning:  General  Characteristics 291 

Art,    Love,    and    Religion    in    the    Poetry    of    Robert 

Browning 326 

Arthur  Hugh  Clough 362 

A  New  England  Mystic 381 


AN  OLD  CASTLE 
AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 


AN  OLD  CASTLE 

IN  the  west  of  England,  just  on  the  border  of  Wales, 
in  a  sweet  and  smiling  landscape,  where,  to  the  east, 
far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  stretch  green,  rolling  meadows 
broken  by  waving  fields  of  yellow  grain  and  fair-blooming 
orchards,  with  here  and  there  a  cottage  or  a  manor-house 
"bosomed  high  in  tufted  trees,"  its  blue  wreath  of  evening 
smoke  curling  slowly  up;  and  where,  to  the  west,  rise  gentle 
hills  green  and  smooth  to  the  summit  save  now  and  then 
for  a  reach  of  noble  forest,  and,  on  the  distant  horizon,  the 
dim  blue  outline  of  the  mountains  of  Wales:  in  this  lovely 
country  lies,  at  the  junction  of  the  broad,  shallow  rivers 
Teme  and  Corve,  the  sleepy  old  town  of  Ludlow.  It  is  not 
much  visited  by  American  sight-seers  I  take  it,  though  few 
towns  in  England  are  better  worth  the  seeing.  The  two 
rivers  meet  at  an  acute  angle,  and  the  town  lies  just  within 
the  angle.  As  you  enter  it  from  the  railway  and  walk 
up  its  quaint  and  straggling  main  street,  you  find  yourself 
slowly  climbing  a  long  hill.  Halfway  up  you  may  stop 
for  a  bit  of  meat  and  drink  at  the  Three  Feathers,  a  de- 
lightfully old  hostelry  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Farther 
up,  as  you  near  the  apex  of  the  angle  and  the  junction 
of  the  two  rivers,  almost  at  the  top  of  the  hill,  is  the 
venerable  church  of  St.  Lawrence;  and  a  few  rods  farther, 
at  the  very  top  of  the  hill,  and  just  at  the  junction  of  the 
rivers,  where  the  steep  bluff  falls  sheer  down  into  the  brawl- 
ing stream  below,  there  stands,  noble  though  in  ruin,  the 
Old  Castle  of  Ludlow. 

The  street  of  the  town  leads  straight  up  to  the  castle 

i 


2       AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

wall  that  bars  your  way.  But  in  the  great  outer  gate  is 
now  only  an  old  oaken  door,  and  that  is  invitingly  open  all 
day  long.  The  outer  court  which  you  enter  is  now  a  broad, 
smooth  lawn,  enclosed  on  three  sides  by  the  low  curtain 
walls  over  which  the  great  beech  trees  hang  their  branches. 
But  turning  to  the  right,  you  face,  on  the  fourth  side,  the 
towering  wall  of  the  great  inner  court,  or  castle  proper. 
Passing  over  a  bridge  that  spans  the  old  moat,  now  filled 
with  vines  and  climbing  greenery,  you  pass  through  the 
high-arched  gate,  under  the  shadow  of  the  great  keep,  the 
rusty  teeth  of  the  old  portcullis  grinning  in  their  socket  over 
you,  and  enter  the  inner  court.  You  are  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  little  court  of  perhaps  half  an  acre  is  bright 
and  sunny,  but  there  is  a  sullen  stillness  in  the  air,  and  the 
grim  walls  that  shut  in  around  you,  keeping  silent  the 
secret  of  centuries,  will  throw  a  hush  upon  you  as  you  enter 
their  solemn  circuit.  Time  has  laid  his  hand  but  gently 
on  this  old  castle.  Its  bold  masses  rise  as  they  rose  half 
a  millennium  ago,  its  grand  outlines  still  entire,  though 
softened  a  little  here  and  there  by  the  gradual  touches  of 
decay.  Roofs  are  gone,  and  the  floors  are  green  turf  now; 
ivy  has  mantled  all  one  side  of  the  court,  and  the  whole  is 
slowly  yielding  to  the  tooth  of  time.  But  you  may  still 
clamber  down  into  the  dungeons  at  the  base  of  the  great 
keep, — one  of  the  oldest  in  England,  for  it  was  built  only 
sixteen  years  after  the  Conquest,  more  than  eight  hundred 
years  ago, — and  then  you  can  mount  by  broken  stair  from 
story  to  story  till  you  emerge  quite  at  the  top  and  look 
out  toward  the  sunny  meadow  a  mile  away  that  was  once 
reddened  by  the  blood  of  Bosworth  battle ;  or  you  can  pick 
your  way  through  the  mass  of  noble  building  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  court, — armories,  state-apartments,  banqueting 
hall, — clambering  up  to  get  a  nearer  view  of  some  bit  of 
quaint  carving,  or  a  glimpse  of  green  landscape  framed  in 
some  long,  narrow  window,  or  to  come  out  now  and  then 
into  some  curious  little  bower,  built  in  the  thickness  of  the 
wall,  lighted  by  a  tiny  slit  in  the  gray  stone,  and  just  large 
enough  for  a  lover,  a  lady,  and  a  lute. 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  3 

And  when  you  have  wearied  yourself  by  your  climbing 
among  the  ruins  you  may  lie  upon  the  sunny  sward  in  the 
court  and  dream  away  a  summer  afternoon  in  mingled 
reminiscence  and  imagination  of  the  scenes  and  the  men 
these  walls  have  looked  upon.  They  could  tell  you 
many  a  story  of  early  English  history,  of  Walter  Lacey  and 
Arnold  De  Lisle  and  Maid  Marian,  of  Edward  III  and  his 
cruel  mother,  Isabella.  During  all  the  bloody  Wars  of  the 
Roses  the  tide  of  varying  battle  surged  around  this  castle, 
and  the  turf  where  you  lie  was  stained  again  and  again  by 
the  blood  of  the  red  and  the  white  rose.  In  yonder  rooms 
at  the  northeast  corner  lived  for  a  time  Edward  IV's  two 
sons,  before  they  went  up  to  London  to  meet  that  mys- 
terious death  in  the  Tower  that  every  schoolboy  has  heard 
of.  Hither  came  some  years  later  sad-faced  Catherine  of 
Aragon  from  her  royal  parents,  Ferdinand  and  Isabella; 
yonder  tower  where  she  lived  for  a  few  short  months  with 
her  boy  husband,  Prince  Arthur,  is  still  called  by  her  name. 
Pleasant  hour  of  calm  before  the  storm  of  her  life:  for 
when  her  husband  died,  you  remember,  she  went  from  here 
to  marry  his  brother,  Henry  VIII,  and  her  divorce  from 
him  turned  Europe  upside  down  and  made  the  English 
Church. 

But  the  associations  of  Ludlow  that  are  of  most  in- 
terest and  on  which  I  wish  to  linger  are  of  yet  a  little  later 
date.  From  1559  till  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century  this 
castle  was  an  official  residence  of  a  noble  family  which 
numbered  in  it  some  of  the  greatest  names  of  England's 
greatest  age,  and  whose  list  of  personal  acquaintance  com- 
prised almost  that  whole  circle  of  statesmen,  adventurers, 
and  poets  whose  renown  fills 

The  spacious  times  of  great   Elizabeth 
With  sounds  that  echo  still. 

Ludlow  Castle  was  then  the  seat  of  the  Lord  President  of 
Wales,  to  whom  was  entrusted  a  wide  jurisdiction  over  the 
affairs  of  that  country;  and  in  1559,  shortly  after  Elizabeth 
came  to  the  throne,  she  appointed  to  that  office,  Sir  Henry 


4      AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Sidney.     Sidney  and  his  son-in-law,  Henry  Herbert,  Earl 
of  Pembroke,  held  the  office  until  1601. 

England  from    1560  to    1600 — what  an   age  it  was! 
We  must  try  to  realize  it,  if  we  would  understand  those 
men  whose  figures  loom  so  vast  upon  the  scene  of  history. 
Never  before,  perhaps,  in  the  history  of  the  world  had 
fifty  years  wrought  so  great  changes  in  any  country  as  had 
been  wrought  for  England  during  the  fifty  years  before 
Henry  Sidney  took  his  place  at  Ludlow.     The  whole  face 
of  the  country  was  changed.    The  feudal  system  had  mostly 
passed  away.     Quiet  and  peaceful  days  had  come  at  last. 
The  old  castles  like  this  of  Ludlow,  that  had  been  for  four 
centuries  the  centers  of  battle  and  siege,  ceased  now  to  be 
fortresses  any  more  and  were  turned  into  knightly  palaces. 
It  was  the  beginning  of  modern  life,  you  see.    The  nobles 
no  longer  came  to  court  with  two-handed  sword  and  shield, 
but  in  satin  doublet  and  velvet  cloak,  laced  with  gold  and 
sparkling  with  jewels.     They  builded  themselves,  says  the 
old  chronicler,  Harrison,  fair  manor-houses  of  "brick  or 
hard  stone,  .  .  .  their  rooms  large  and  comelie,  ...  so 
magnificent  and  statelie  as  the  basest  house  of  a  baron  doth 
often  match  in  our  dayes  with  some  honors  of  princes  in  old 
time."     Inside  these  fair  and  comely  houses,  though  you 
would  find  only  rushes  under  your   feet  as  yet,   there  is 
gorgeous  tapestry  of  Arras  upon  the  walls,  there  is  costly 
linen  in  the  presses,  there  is  abundance  of  silver  and  gold 
plate    upon    the    board, — to    the    value,    says    old    Har- 
rison, of  two  thousand  pounds  at  the  least  in  any  noble- 
man's   house     (equal,    you    know,    to    seventy-five    thou- 
sand   dollars    nowadays).     You    sat    in    chairs,    you    sat 
at  tables,  whose  carved  richness  and  beauty  are  the  despair 
of  modern  imitators;  and  you  looked  out  over  the  green 
English   country    through   windows   of    clear   glass   newly 
brought  from  Flanders  or  Normandy.     And  when  your 
imagination  can  reproduce  for  you  the  vision  of  these  noble 
old  rooms,  lighted  with  little  diamond-paned  windows,  with 
the   high,   open-timbered   roof   overhead,    the   gray   walls 
bright  with  tapestry  and  hung  with  armor,  the  floor  strewn 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  5 

with  rushes,  then,  in  this  quaint  setting,  frame  the  glittering 
picture  of  the  knights  and  ladies  of  those  times.  We  have 
forgotten  what  dress  is.  The  Puritans  carried  the  day 
in  this  as  in  other  matters.  Perhaps  it  is  as  well;  but  how 
picturesque,  what  a  thing  of  glittering  beauty  must  have 
been  the  costume  of  that  time!  It  is  only  on  the  canvas 
of  a  Titian  or  a  Rubens  that  it  lives  any  longer  for  us. 
You  must  think  of  the  fine  gentleman  with  a  tight-fitting 
doublet  of  scarlet  satin,  embroidered  with  gold  and  slashed 
to  show  the  rich  laces  underneath,  a  ruff  at  his  neck,  a 
cloak  of  white  sables  costing  a  thousand  ducats,  black 
trunk-hose  covered  with  lace,  rose-colored  nether  socks  from 
Venice;  velvet  shoes  of  blue  with  rubies  in  the  buckles,  or 
perhaps  boots  with  falling  tops  out  of  which  gushed  a  cloud 
of  lace  in  which  you  caught  the  glint  of  gems;  in  the  hilt  of 
his  sword  sparkles  a  great  diamond,  and  all  Arabia  breathes 
as  he  passes  by!  Yet  do  not  say  this  is  .he  mere  foppery 
of  pusillanimous  gallants.  These  men  are  the  conquerors 
of  the  world,  and  next  year  mayhap  will  be  parching  with 
pestilence  while  fighting  the  Spaniard  in  the  swamps  of 
Central  America,  or  dying  of  cold  amid  the  snows  of  the 
polar  sea.  No,  it  is  the  joy  and  pride  of  life,  the  rich 
prodigality  of  power,  the  new  sense  of  all  the  goodliness 
of  this  brave  world  that  blossoms  in  this  outward  mag- 
nificence. What  else  were  gold  and  jewels  for?  And  of 
gold  and  jewels  the  land  was  full.  When  Francis  Drake's 
ship,  having  harried  the  Spaniards  in  every  water  under 
the  whole  heaven,  and  flown  like  some  swift  secret  thing 
around  the  world,  at  last  came  home  to  Plymouth  Harbour, 
the  little  craft  was  laden  down  with  treasures  to  the  value 
of  eight  hundred  thousand  pounds  sterling,  or  in  the  money 
of  to-day  at  least  twenty-five  million  dollars, — five  dollars 
for  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  England.  Think  of 
that.  And  as  to  the  dress  of  the  ladies, — far  be  it  from 
me  to  attempt  to  describe  that:  we  know  it  kept  well  in 
advance  of  that  of  the  gentlemen.  Doesn't  every  school 
girl  know  that  Queen  Elizabeth  had  three  thousand  dresses 
in  her  wardrobe,  and  have  we  not  all  in  mind  that  well- 


6       AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

known  picture  in  which  she  struts  to  all  posterity  in  the 
gorgeous  though  ugly  costume  in  which  Zucchero  painted 
her? 

But  it  was  not  the  rich  only  who  felt  the  general  tide 
of  prosperity.  In  the  farm  houses,  says  chronicler  Har- 
rison, there  were  three  great  changes  that  all  men  noticed. 
One  was  the  multitude  of  chimneys  newly  built,  when  afore- 
time the  fire  was  on  the  floor;  another  was  the  use  of 
pillows,  when  once  men  were  contented  with  a  good  round 
Jog;  and  the  third  was  the  change  from  wooden  vessels  to 
those  of  pewter  or  tin. 

But  far  more  important  and  more  wonderful  than  these 
merely  material  changes,  among  high  or  low,  were  the 
changes  in  ideas  the  English  mind  had  experienced  in  fifty 
years.  The  transition  here  from  medieval  life  to  modern 
life  was  made  in  a  single  generation.  Suppose  you  had  been 
a  man  of  three-score  when  Henry  Sidney  went  to  Ludlow 
in  1559;  think  of  what  changes  you  could  have  told  !  When 
you  were  a  boy,  most  likely,  even  though  of  gentle  birth, 
you  did  not  learn  to  read  or  write  at  all.  The  first  Earl 
of  Pembroke,  I  remember  old  Aubrey  says,  "could  not  read 
or  write,  but  did  have  a  great  stamp  to  his  name."  There 
was  fighting  all  the  time  and  little  prospect  of  anything 
else,  with  the  chance  that  whichever  side  you  took  you 
might  lose  your  head  for  not  taking  the  other.  And,  in- 
deed, if  you  had  any  leisure  or  liking  to  read,  what  was 
the  good?  In  English  there  was  little  save  old  Dan 
Chaucer  that  was  worth  the  reading,  and  in  French  there 
was  nothing  better;  Greek  was  an  unknown  tongue,  and 
Latin  was  a  priests'  tongue  in  which  there  was  nothing  but 
devotion  and  philosophy  that  no  man  with  blood  in  him 
cared  for.  As  for  knowledge,  men  knew  all  that  was 
worth  knowing.  They  knew  that  this  earth  was  a  wide 
plain, — you  had  seen  with  the  monks  at  the  abbey  a  map 
that  showed  the  whole  of  it.  If  you  sailed  away  toward 
the  setting  sun,  you  would  come  after  some  days  to  the 
edge,  where  the  waters  rolled  off  to  the  abyss  below.  To 
the  east  you  might  go  somewhat  farther,  past  the  Holy 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  7 

Land  to  Cathay  and  the  great  Caspian  Sea,  where  the 
people  had  long  tails  and  feet  so  big  they  used  them  for 
umbrellas,  and  quite  beyond  all,  on  the  farther  edge,  was 
the  distant  land  of  the  great  Emperor  of  Tartary  of  whom 
wondrous  things  were  written  (so  you  had  heard),  in  the 
Travels  of  Sir  John  Mandeville.  Yet  the  whole  was  not 
so  very  large;  a  year's  travel  would  take  you  to  the  farthest 
verge, — if  only  you  cared  to  go.  And  over  your  head, 
above  the  solid  blue  arch  of  the  sky  on  which  rolled  every 
day  the  great  orb  of  the  sun,  there  was  heaven,  God,  and 
the  blessed  saints.  Down  somewhere  beneath  your  feet  on 
the  underside  of  this  solid  earth  there  was  hell  and  purga- 
tory, where  you  trusted  your  soul  would  not  stay  long,  as 
you  would  leave  a  handsome  chantry,  for  the  priests  to 
sing  it  out.  And  this  you  knew  was  all.  You  understood 
it  all  well  enough.  You  had  the  evidence  of  your  senses  for 
it.  You  no  more  doubted  the  accuracy  of  your  knowledge 
than  you  doubted  that  your  blood  stood  still  in  your  veins 
like  water  in  a  bottle.  You  knew  enough:  the  thing  to 
do  in  this  life  was  to  take  care  of  yourself  with  your  strong 
right  arm;  as  to  the  life  to  come,  that  the  priests  would 
take  care  of, — what  else  were  they  for?  And  as  one  man 
in  every  three  was  a  priest,  it  was  likely  to  be  well  taken 
care  of. 

So  you  thought  when  you  were  young.  But  you 
had  lived  to  see  all  that  changed.  Instead  of  thinking  this 
earth  flat,  you  had  lived  to  know  that  it  was  round,  and 
that  there  was  a  wonderful  new  world  just  on  the  other 
side  of  it, — great  rivers  that  ran  over  sands  of  gold, 
Amazons,  and  men  whose  heads  did  grow  beneath  their 
shoulders.  And  although  you  couldn't  well  understand  it 
all,  yet  you  couldn't  well  doubt  it,  either;  for  hadn't  you 
yourself  seen  at  Plymouth  the  ship  that  had  sailed  quite 
round  the  world  and  come  home  without  ever  turning  back 
at  all?  You  had  been  told  that  the  sun  didn't  move,  but 
that  the  earth  itself  was  rolling  instead;  and  you  were  al- 
most ready  to  believe  that,  for  now  somehow  the  very 
grounds  of  belief   seemed  different   from   what  they  used 


8      AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

to  be,  and  you  had  learned  not  to  trust  your  senses.  But 
if  so,  your  whole  cosmogony  was  changed.  This  arch 
above  was  not  an  arch  at  all.  Where  then  was  heaven? 
Where  was  hell?  You  thought  you  knew  once,  but  it  was 
hardly  worth  while  to  guess  now.  This  world,  at  all  events, 
was  a  vaster  place  than  you  had  ever  dreamed  of.  It  was 
perhaps  enough  to  know  that.  Your  son  had  gone  with 
Sir  Francis  Drake  and  you  wished  you  could  go  too. 

But  you  had  heard  stranger  things  even  than  this  of 
the  New  World.  When  you  were  a  boy  men  came  to 
Oxford  to  teach  the  new  learning,  to  teach  the  new  tongue, 
Greek.  There  was  something  to  read  now.  Your  son  could 
read  Homer,  and  iEschylus,  and  Plato,  and  Virgil,  and 
Seneca.  A  whole  new  world  had  opened  to  the  imagination 
here,  too.  And  what  perhaps  was  strangest  of  all :  you  had 
lived  to  see  the  Bible  put  into  your  English  tongue,  chained 
up  in  the  church  a  while,  under  old  King  Hal, — whom  after 
all  you  were  somewhat  proud  of,  though,  to  be  sure,  he 
wasn't  exactly  a  saint, — then  taken  down  and  burned  by 
Mary,  and  now  you  had  a  copy  of  your  own.  You  had 
seen  a  deal  of  burning  for  religion,  now  for  believing  and 
now  for  disbelieving  what  seemed  to  you  about  the  same 
things;  but  you  had  kept  your  own  counsel  and  made  up 
your  mind  for  yourself,  slowly,  as  well  as  you  could.  The 
monks  were  gone,  that  you  were  glad  of;  and  now  that  Her 
Gracious  Majesty,  young  Queen  Elizabeth  had  come  to  the 
throne,  and  quiet  days  were  here,  you  felt  certain  that, 
whatever  religion  was  right,  that  of  Spain  and  Rome,  the 
enemies  of  your  queen  and  country,  was  not  right.  Spain 
was  of  the  devil, — that  you  were  sure  of,  and  with  God's 
good  grace,  you  and  your  sons  would  fight  her  to  the 
death. 

Ah,  but  suppose  you  had  been  a  young  man  then, — 
born  into  the  new  order  of  things,  with  a  new  faith  to 
keep,  a  new  country  to  defend,  a  new  queen  to  serve,  a 
new  world  to  conquer!  'Bliss  was  it  then  to  be  alive, 
but  to  be  young  was  very  heaven  1'  Our  age  is  doubtless 
be9t  for  you  and  me;  but  never  again  will  the  pulse  of 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  9 

humanity  bound  30  high,  never  again,  it  seems  to  me,  can 
there  be  so  much  to  rouse  curiosity  and  stimulate  imagina- 
tion, as  in  that  morning  of  modern  life.  The  story  of  those 
days  told  even  now  over  the  lapse  of  three  cold  centuries 
stirs  the  blood  like  a  trumpet  peal.  All  England  was 
seething  with  a  strange  new  life.  Within  fifty  years  the 
creeds  of  ten  centuries  had  been  swept  away.  The  last 
page  of  history  was  filled  with  the  story  of  revolution  and 
bright  with  the  records  of  hero  and  martyr.  Beyond  the 
seas  lay  a  New  World,  its  wonders  the  vision  and  the  dream 
of  poetry,  its  untold  wealth  the  glittering  prize  of  ad- 
venture. Old  things  were  done  away;  all  things  were  new; 
and  England,  freest  and  fairest  of  the  nations,  under  her 
virgin  Queen  was  to  lead  the  van  in  the  work  of  regenerat- 
ing the  world  by  the  word  of  the  Gospel  and  the  knightly 
sword. 

It  is  of  these  days  that  your  afternoon  at  Ludlow  will 
remind  you  most,  and  of  the  family  that  lived  here  then, — 
the  family  that,  as  I  have  said,  represents  in  its  own  mem- 
bers and  in  its  circle  of  intimate  acquaintance,  better  than 
any  other  family,  the  courtesy,  the  romance,  the  poetry,  if 
not  the  statesmanship,  of  the  great  age. 

Sir  Henry  Sidney  was  a  little  past  middle  life  when  his 
young  queen  appointed  him  President  of  the  Welsh 
Marches  aid  sent  him  to  Ludlow, — "a  man,"  says  his 
friend  Lord  Brooke,  "of  excellent  natural  wit,  large  heart, 
and  sweet  conversation,"  a  courtier  and  a  soldier.  He  had 
known  already  many  of  the  changes  of  the  great  world. 
He  had  been  the  best  friend  of  Edward  VI,  and  had  that 
boy  king  listened  to  such  advice  as  Sidney's,  his  rule  would 
have  been  wiser  if  not  longer.  And  when  that  misguided 
monarch  closed  his  little  day  of  rule,  it  was  in  Henry 
Sidney's  arms  that  he  breathed  his  last,  and  Henry  Sidney's 
hand  that  closed  the  royal  eyes.  Keeping  a  discreet  retire- 
ment during  the  bitter  reign  of  Mary,  both  for  his  own 
sake  and  his  wife's,  he  was  called  to  duty  at  once  by  Eliza- 
beth, and  both  here  at  Ludlow,  and  afterward  in  Ireland, 
served  his  royal  mistress  well.     But  his  wife,  Mary  Sidney, 


io     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

was  of  more  famous  line  than  he.  Very  charming  are  the 
glimpses  we  can  get  of  her  through  the  glooms  of  inter- 
vening centuries.  Of  the  dangers  that  wait  upon  high 
station  she  had  known  more  than  enough  in  her  earlier 
days.  Her  father  was  that  proud  earl  of  Northumberland 
who  tried  to  govern  Edward  VI,  and  her  brother  Guildford 
was  the  young  husband  of  the  fair  Lady  Jane  Grey.  And 
when  the  ambition  of  her  father  sought  to  place  her  brother 
Guildford  and  her  sister-in-law,  Lady  Jane,  upon  the 
throne  of  England,  Mary  Sidney  had  seen  her  father,  and 
her  brother  Guildford,  and  her  dear  friend  and  sister,  Lady 
Jane,  all  perish  together  by  the  headsman's  axe.  The 
shadow  of  that  "Black  Monday"  was  never  wholly  lifted 
from  her  life.  She  was  often  at  the  court  of  Elizabeth; 
but,  as  one  who  knew  her  said,  "she  chose  rather  to  hide 
herself  from  the  curious  eyes  of  a  delicate  time,"  and  to  find 
at  her  home  at  Penshurst  and  here  at  Ludlow,  where  she 
often  came  with  her  husband,  fittest  scene  in  which  to  play 
a  noble  woman's  part.  For  she  was  yet  a  Dudley,  with  the 
high  ambition,  the  generous  appreciation  of  greatness  that 
marked  that  family.  She  was  worthy  of  her  heroic  age, 
and  it  was  her  just  pride  to  have  given  to  that  age  a  son 
and  a  daughter  who  will  be  remembered  to  all  future  time 
as  patterns  of  all  that  is  knightly  in  man,  and  all  that  is 
winning  in  woman. 

But  if  Mary  Sidney  had  wished  to  shine  at  the  court 
of  Elizabeth,  she  would  have  lacked  no  opportunity  of  ad- 
vancement. For  her  surviving  brother — and  it  would 
seem  an  affectionate  and  trusted  brother — was  Robert 
Dudley,  the  great  Earl  of  Leicester,  prime  favorite  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  and  for  nearly  twenty  years  foremost 
man  in  the  court  of  England.  What  shall  we  think  of  this 
great  Lord  Leicester?  Shall  we  think  him  merely  the 
shallow  intriguing  courtier  who  won  the  favor  of  his  queen 
by  a  handsome  figure,  a  courtly  dress,  and  a  flattering 
tongue;  who  was  incapable  of  any  genuine  devotion  to  any 
person  or  any  cause;  who  broke  the  neck  of  pretty  Amy 
Robsart — as    Sir    Walter    tells    us    in    Kenilworth — when 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  u 

she  stood  in  the  way  of  that  marriage  with  Queen  Eliza- 
beth for  which  he  had  dared  to  hope;  who,  when  'the  bolt 
of  Cupid  missed  the  imperial  votaress  throned  by  the  west,' 
poisoned  the  Earl  of  Essex  that  he  might  marry  the 
Countess  Lettice, — that 

little  western  flower, 
Before  milk-white,  now  purple  with  love's  wound: 

who  respected  neither  truth,  purity,  nor  loyalty,  and  fell  a 
victim  at  last  to  the  black  arts  by  which  he  had  so  often  com- 
passed the  destruction  of  others  ?    So  we  have  often  been  told 
to  think,  since  the  Jesuit  Parsons  first  printed  his  filthy  pack 
of  lies,   and  saucy  Naunton,   silly  chamberman  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  wrote  his  Relation.  But  what  shall  we  say  then  of 
those   who  numbered   him   among   their   friends?     Queen 
Elizabeth  loved  this  man,  nay,  the  woman  Elizabeth  loved 
this  man,  and  had  she  not  known  that  marriage  could  not  be 
her  lot,  would  have  married  him;  repressed  her  affection  for 
him,  yea,  denied  it,  with  what  bitter  unavailing  regrets  of  her 
lonely  woman's  soul  no  man  may  say.    And  was  Elizabeth, 
with  all  her  follies,  the  woman  to  be  won  by  the  drop  of  a 
feather,  the  shape  of  a  leg,  or  the  turn  of  a  compliment? 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  pattern  gentleman  and  knight,  loved  and 
honored  this  Leicester,  not  merely,  it  should  seem,  because 
he  was  his  uncle,  but  because  he  was  a  man;  and  when 
Leicester  was  assailed  by  the  tongue  of  slander,  it  was  Sidney 
who  flamed  out  into  indignant  denial  of  the  charge.     When 
the    great,    pure,    Christian    poet    of    that    age,    Edmund 
Spenser,   wrote  his   epic,    The  Faery   Queen,   he  said  that 
the  central  figure  in  that  poem,  Prince  Arthur,   friend  of 
all   the  good  and  knightly,   and   foe  of   all   the  base,  was 
meant   to   represent   his   dear   friend   and   patron,    Robert, 
Earl   of  Leicester.      Was  Edmund  Spenser   the  man  who 
could  consent,  for  the  sake  of  servile  flattery,  to  give  the 
place  of  honor  in  the  great  Elizabethan  epic  to  a  shallow 
courtier,  an  adulterer,  and  a  murderer?     I  cannot  think  so 
hardly  of  Leicester  or  of  his  friends.     Something  worthy 
he  must  have  had  to  win  such   friends.     A  great  man  he 


12     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

certainly  was  not, — no  great  warrior,  no  great  statesman. 
He  belonged  rather  to  that  other  class  of  men,  who,  while 
they  cannot  achieve  greatness  themselves,  have  the  grace 
to  appreciate  it  in  others.  He  had  a  quick  eye  and  open 
heart  for  most  that  was  brightest  and  best  in  the  England 
of  his  day.  He  called  men  of  letters  and  art  about  him- 
self. No  statesman,  he  saw  which  way  led  the  path  of 
honor  for  his  country;  he  was  a  Protestant  from  the  start. 
Enthusiasm,  generous  sympathies,  a  fine  bloom  of  courtesy, 
— these  are  not  the  stuff  of  which  the  highest  virtues  are 
made,  but  they  are  very  winning  nevertheless.  My  Lord 
of  Leicester  did  not  always  follow  the  narrow  path  of 
honor,  I  fear;  but  he  wished  well  to  those  who  did,  and 
I  think  his  sins  were  those  of  an  easy  pliancy  of  nature, 
rather  than  of  native  villainy.  A  man  whose  grandfather, 
father,  and  brother  have  all  perished  on  the  scaffold  for 
purely  political  offenses  may  perhaps  be  excused  if  his  wari- 
ness sometimes  degenerated  into  intrigue. 

But  if  it  is  only  with  grave  reservations  that  one  can 
commend  the  brilliant  Lord  Leicester,  it  is  with  admira- 
tion unqualified  that  one  turns  to  his  nephew,  the  son  of 
Mary  and  Henry  Sidney.  Who  hasn't  fashioned  in  his 
imagination  the  picture  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney?  Who  doesn't 
know  the  story — only  too  short  a  story — of  his  life? 
There  is  little  of  incident  in  it;  it  is  only  one  bright  glimpse 
that  we  can  get  of  this  pattern  knight  of  the  sixteenth 
century:  yet  this  glimpse  irradiates  his  age  and  still  shines 
serene  through  the  glooms  of  history.  When  his  father 
took  possession  of  this  castle  of  Ludlow,  Philip  Sidney  was 
a  boy  of  five,  and,  growing  up  a  grave  and  studious  lad,  was 
sent  to  Shrewsbury  School.  Very  wise  and  tender  are  the 
letters  his  mother  wrote  him  there.  A  little  later  at  Ox- 
ford, with  the  keen  intellectual  curiosity  of  his  age,  the 
young  man  intermeddled  with  all  learning,  gaining  what- 
soever was  to  be  learned  there,  and,  with  powers  of  re- 
flection beyond  his  years,  ripening  his  learning  into  the 
richer  fruit  of  wisdom.  He  had  a  year  at  court  with  his 
uncle  Leicester,  and  then  he  went  abroad  to  see  Europe. 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  13 

To  see  Europe,  in  those  days,  as  very  likely  in  these,  did 
many  a  young  fellow  more  harm  than  good.  So  thought 
old  Roger  Ascham,  Elizabeth's  schoolmaster,  who  de- 
clared a  year  or  so  before  young  Sidney  went  away  that 
young  men  usually  brought  home  from  Italy  "for  learning, 
less  commonly  than  they  carried  out  with  them ;  for  policy,  a 
factious  heart,  a  discoursing  head,  a  mind  to  meddle  in  all 
men's  matters;  for  experience,  plenty  of  new  mischiefs  never 
known  in  England  before;  for  manners,  variety  of  vanities, 
and  change  of  filthy  living."  "I  was  once  in  Italy  myself," 
said  blunt  old  Ascham,  "but  I  thank  God  my  abode  there 
was  but  nine  days."  But  it  was  something  better  than  this 
that  young  Sidney  learned  abroad.  He  learned  to  know  the 
great  forces  of  Europe  that  were  arrayed  against  each 
other  for  the  desperate  struggle  of  history.  He  was  in 
Paris  on  the  night  of  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew, 
safely  housed  with  his  friend,  the  English  envoy,  Sir  Francis 
Walsingham.  He  went  on  to  Italy, — the  bad  brilliant 
Italy  of  Galileo  and  Machiavelli,  of  Raphael  and  Pope 
Sixtus.  He  came  back  to  England  through  Strasburg,  and 
Frankfort,  and  Leyden.  He  had  seen  both  sides;  he  had 
made  up  his  mind.  Henceforth  he  would  be  something 
more  than  a  courtier,  something  more  than  a  scholar:  he 
would  be  a  soldier  in  the  great  battle  against  sin  and  anti- 
christ, against  the  King  of  Spain  and  the  Pope  of  Rome. 
But  what  rare  charm  was  it  that  won  for  this  man,  wherever 
he  went,  the  admiring  love  of  princes,  of  scholars,  of  sol- 
diers, of  peasants?  It  was  his  Christian  scholarship  that 
won  the  heart  of  the  saintly  Huguenot  Languet,  "who  daily 
lived  as  good  men  wish  to  die";  it  was  the  wonderful  ripe- 
ness of  the  political  opinions  of  this  young  man  of  twenty- 
four  that  commanded  the  admiration  of  William  the  Silent, 
who  wrote  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  "Your  Majesty  has  in 
young  Mr.  Sidney  one  of  the  greatest  statesmen  I  know  in 
Europe";  it  was  his  imagination,  his  enthusiasm,  his  taste, 
that  drew  around  him  poets  like  Spenser,  who  loved  him 
with  a  love  that  bordered  on  idolatry;  it  was  his  manly 
beauty,  grace  of  manner,  the  fine  flower  of  courtesy  that 


14     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

drew  the  admiring  glance  of  courtiers   and  of  ladies, — 
"extremely  beautiful  he  was,"  says  gossiping  old  Aubrey, 
"much  like  his  sister";  it  was  the  union  of  all  these  qualities, 
"the  courtier's,  soldier's,   scholar's,   eye,   tongue,   sword," 
the  high  erected  thoughts  seated  in  a  heart  of  courtesy: 
all  these,  but  it  was  something  more  than  all  these,  too, 
that  won  for  young  Sidney  his  undying  reputation  as  the 
pattern  gentleman.    It  was  that  rarest  grace  of  self-denial 
and  self-forgetfulness  in  his  devotion  to  others  that  has 
spread  around  his  name  the  lasting  fragrance  of  a  pure 
renown,  and  has  consecrated  to  posterity  the  story  of  his 
death.     That  story,  thousands  who  know  nothing  else  of 
Sidney  learned  in  their  childhood  never  to  forget.    He  had 
passed  some  impatient  years  at  court  chafing  under  the  re- 
strictions of  Elizabeth,  who  protested  she  could  not  spare 
so  bright  an  ornament;  during  a  short  season  of  enforced 
idleness  with  his  sister  at  Wilton  he  had  given  expression 
to  his  enthusiasm  and  his  poetry  in  that  now  almost  for- 
gotten romance,  the  Arcadia;  his  voice,  wise  and  eloquent 
though  youthful,  had  been  heard  in  parliament:     but  all 
this  life  was  too  tame.     With  the  fire  of  youth  he  longed 
for  the  front  of  the  battle.    His  heart  was  with  the  Raleighs, 
the  Gilberts,  the  Drakes.     Once,  indeed,  he  stole  away  to 
Plymouth  to  sail  with  his  friend  Sir  Francis  Drake  against 
the  Spaniards;  but  Queen  Elizabeth  heard  of  it,  and  her 
absolute  command  brought  him  back,  and  he  had  to  wait 
another  year  before  he  could  at  last  go  to  the  Netherlands 
with  Leicester  where,  after  nearly  a  year  in  idleness,  he  fell 
at  Zutphen,  grievously  wounded.     And  then  happened  the 
incident  that  has  immortalized  his  name.     "Being  thirsty 
with  excess  of  bleeding,"  writes  his  earliest  biographer,1 
"he  called  for  drink  which  was  presently  brought  him;  but 
as  he  was  putting  the  bottle  to  his  mouth,  he  saw  a  poor 
soldier  carried  along,  who  had  eaten  his  last  at  the  same 
feast,  ghastly  casting  up  his  eyes  at  the  bottle.     Which  Sir 

*01d  Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brooke,  that  shadowy  enigmatical  character, 
so  alluring  to  Lamb,  who  in  his  self-composed  epitaph  designates  himself 
"servant  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  conceller  to  King  James,  frend  to  Sir  Philip 
Sidney."     [L.  B.  G.] 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  15 

Philip  perceiving,  took  it  from  his  head,  before  he  drank, 
and  delivered  it  to  the  poor  man,  with  these  words,  'Thy 
necessity  is  yet  greater  than  mine.'  And  when  he  had 
pledged  this  poor  soldier,  he  was  presently  carried  to  Arn- 
heim."  Here  he  died  three  weeks  later  with  words  of 
Christian  hope  upon  his  lips.  At  his  death,  says  his  chaplain 
who  watched  by  his  side,  he  lifted  up  his  eyes  and  hands 
uttering  these  words,  "I  would  not  change  my  joy  for  the 
empire  of  the  world."  So  passed,  at  the  age  of  thirty-two, 
a  true  knight,  "who  trod,"  as  an  old  writer  says,  "from  his 
cradle  to  his  grave  amid  incense  and  flowers  and  died  in  a 
dream  of  glory."  The  pattern  gentleman  of  England,  is 
not  that  a  goodly  fame?  I  think  it  cannot  be  that  any 
of  the  several  portraits  we  have  gives  us  the  charm  of  his 
face.  His  best  portrait  was  that  drawn  by  an  obscure 
anonymous  writer  just  after  his  death,  in  the  oft-quoted 
lines: 

A  sweet  attractive  kinde  of  grace, 
A  full  assurance  given  by  lookes, 
Continuall  comfort  in  a  face, 
The  lineaments  of  Gospell  bookes. 

One  would  like  to  know  more  of  Philip  Sidney's  sister, 
Mary.  Like  her  mother,  Mary  Sidney  was  never  ambitious 
to  shine  in  courts  or  to  meddle  with  the  affairs  of  state, 
and  the  records  of  the  historian,  therefore,  but  seldom 
mention  her.  But  no  woman  of  her  age  has  a  more  enviable 
tame  than  she.  About  the  time  that  Philip  Sidney  came 
home  from  his  travels  on  the  Continent,  his  sister  Mary 
married  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  a  grave  and  quiet  man  much 
older  than  herself.  For  forty  years  thereafter,  Mary 
Sidney,  Countess  of  Pembroke,  was  perhaps  the  one  woman 
in  England  best  worth  knowing.  In  those  days  learning 
was  thought  to  befit  a  woman  as  well  as  a  man,  and  Mary 
Sidney  was  mistress  not  only  of  the  French,  Italian,  and 
Latin  languages,  but  of  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  as  well. 
She  was  a  graceful  writer  of  verse;  and  her  house  at 
Wilton — beautiful    still    in    its    quiet    seclusion    just    within 


1 6     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

sight  of  the   graceful   cathedral   spire   of   Salisbury — and 
her  town-house  in  Aldersgate  Street  were  the  homes  of 
learning  and  of  poetry.     Her  society  was  sought  by  the 
greatest  and  the  wisest  of  her  day.   Her  brother  Philip  wrote 
for  her  amusement  the  Arcadia, — The  Countess  of  Pem- 
broke's   Arcadia    is    its    name,    you  remember.      Edmund 
Spenser  sang  her  praise  in  one  of  his  best  minor  poems.    A 
host  of  lesser  lyric  singers  fluttered  about  her.     She  was, 
it  is  safe  to  say,  the  patron  and  friend  of  Shakespeare  him- 
self, and  we  know  that  her  son,  William  Herbert, — after 
his  father's  death  third  Earl  of  Pembroke,   in  later  days 
Chancellor  of  Oxford,  founder  of  Pembroke  College,  the 
man  who  was,  says  Clarendon,  the  most  universally  beloved 
and  esteemed  of  any  in  that  age, — we  know,  I  say,  that  this 
young  William   Herbert,   Mary   Sidney's   son   and   Philip 
Sidney's  nephew,  was  a  generous  and  intelligent  friend  of 
Shakespeare.     It  was  to  him  that  the  first  folio  edition  of 
Shakespeare  was  dedicated,  and  if  we  could  ever  unriddle 
that  world's  enigma,  the  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare,  I  think 
it  probable  that  we  should  find  the  "Mr.  W.  H."  to  whom 
they  are  dedicated  to  be  none  other  than  young  William 
Herbert,  Mary  Sidney's  son.     It  was  to  Mary  Sidney,  too, 
that  Shakespeare's  great  compeer,   Ben  Jonson,  dedicated 
some  of  his  best  work,  with  words  of  such  wise  and  manly 
esteem  as  do  credit  alike  to  him  and  to  her.     She  out- 
lived her  husband   many  years,   retaining  to   the  last  the 
increasing  honor   and   affection   of   all   in   England   whose 
regard  was  worth  most,   and  when  she  died  it  was  Ben 
Jonson  *    who   wrote    for   her    the   beautiful    and    famous 
epitaph : 

Underneath  this  sable  hearse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse, 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother; 
Death,  ere  thou  hast  slain  another, 
Fair,  and  learned,  and  good  as  she, 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee. 

1  Or  perhaps  William  Browne.     See  note  F.  E.   Schelling's  Elizabethan 
Lyrics,  pp.  294-5.     [L.  B.  G.] 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  17 

There  was  another  noble   family  whose   relations  with 
the  Sidneys  every  one  familiar  with  the  story  will  recollect. 
In  those  relations  lay  the  romance  and  the  pathos  of  Philip 
Sidney's  life.     When  Philip  Sidney's  father,  Henry  Sidney, 
went  to  take  possession  of  this  castle  of  Ludlow,  among 
his  circle  of  noble  acquaintance  was  Walter  Devereux,  Karl 
oi  Lssex.     This  Earl  of  Essex  would  seem  to  have  been 
an  honest  and  good  man,  but  he  had  just  set  his  hand  to 
that  never  ending  and,  I  fear,  hopeless  task  of  composing 
Ireland  to  English  rule.     It  was.  at  best,  a  bad  and  bloody 
business,  and  my  Lord  of  Essex  made  but  a  poor  success 
of  it.     He  marched  and  countermarched,  killed  some  hun- 
dreds of  kerns  and  gallowglasses,  and,  if  the  truth  be  told, 
some    hundreds    of    Irish    mothers    and    babies    too,    and, 
harassed  by   failure  in   Ireland   and   faction   at   home,   was 
glad  to  give  up  the  task  of  quieting  Ireland  to  his  friend 
Henry  Sidney,  who  tried  milder  measures  with  but  little 
better  success.     But  before  my  Lord  of  Essex  could  get  back 
to   England   he   was   seized   with    a   violent   illness,   which 
proved  the  death  of  him.     On  his  deathbed,  says  his  chroni- 
cler, his  chief  care  was  for  his  children,  lamenting  the  time 
which  was  so  ungodly,   lest  they  should  learn  of  this  vile 
world.     "O  my  poor  children,"  would  he  say,  "God  bless 
you  and  give  you  of  his  grace."     Perhaps  the  dying  father 
knew  that  the  impetuous  temper  of  his  children  portended 
for  them  a  stormy  career.     At  all  events  their  after  life 
justified  his  apprehensions.    This  Earl  of  Essex,  like  Henry 
Sidney,  had  a  son  and  a  daughter,  Robert  and  Penelope 
Devereux,  and  the  story  of  Robert  Devereux,  third  Earl  of 
Essex,  and  of  Penelope,  his  sister,  is  quite  as  famous  and 
romantic  as  that  of  Philip  and  Mary  Sidney,  but  unhappily 
theirs  is  not  so  fair  a  fame. 

Penelope  Devereux  was  only  thirteen  years  old  when 
her  father  died.  Four  years  later  she  was  the  most 
beautiful  woman  in  England.  Not  Bessie  Throgmorton, 
the  fair  maid  of  honor  who  became  Walter  Raleigh's 
wife,  not  Lucy  Harrington,  the  lovely  Countess  of 
Bedford,    not   even   her   own   cousin,    the   charming   Eliza- 


1 8     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

beth  Vernon,  Helen  of  the  Elizabethan  poets,  whom 
Shakespeare's  friend,  the  Earl  of  Southampton,  wooed  for 
five  years  and  braved  the  anger  of  his  sovereign  to  marry 
at  last, — none  of  these,  nor  any  other  woman  whose  por- 
trait or  story  has  come  down  to  us,  can  have  had,  I  think, 
the  strangely  fascinating  beauty,  the  wild,  impetuous  charm 
of  Penelope  Devereux.  Strangely  enough,  no  portrait  of 
her  painted  by  brush  of  artist  is  known  to  be  in  existence ; 
yet  her  beauty  has  been  so  enshrined  in  poetry  that  it  is 
not  difficult  to  image  it.  Her  abundant  hair  was  of  that 
hue  of  tawny  gold  which  catches  every  gleam  of  the  sun 
and  shines  in  lustrous  glimmerings, — "beams  of  gold  caught 
in  a  net,"  said  her  lover.  But  her  complexion,  in  strange 
and  striking  contrast  to  her  hair,  was  dark, — her  cheek  a 
kindly  claret,  her  face  like  Juliet's,  full  of  the  warm  South ; 
and  her  eyes,  under  raven  brows  and  lashes,  were  as  black 
as  night,  now  soft  and  melting,  now  glowing  with  an  im- 
perial radiance.  These  eyes  were  the  marvel  of  her  face, — 
"black  stars,  twin  children  of  the  sun,"  as  her  lover  calls 
them, — and  one  can  fancy  as  he  reads  her  story  that  he 
sees  through  all  the  darks  of  the  past  the  soft  splendor 
of  their  beauty.  This  woman  with  a  face  of  such  startling 
beauty,  "day  with  its  golden  lights  in  her  hair,  night  and 
starlight  in  her  eyes,"  as  one  admirer  says;  this  woman  with 
the  pride  of  a  house  that  bore  high  rank  in  Normandy  be- 
fore ever  the  Conqueror  set  foot  in  England :  this  was  the 
woman  who  should  have  found  her  home  and  her  fame  as  the 
wife  of  Philip  Sidney.  They  had  been  intended  for  each 
other  from  childhood,  and  when  Penelope  Devereux's 
father  lay  dying  he  sent  a  message  of  regret  to  Philip  Sidney 
that  he  could  not  live  to  call  him  son.  But  as  the  girl  grew 
to  womanhood  the  match  was  broken  off, — no  one  knows 
why  or  by  whom, — and  before  she  was  nineteen  Penelope 
Devereux  was  forced  by  her  guardians  to  marry  one  of  the 
richest  and  one  of  the  basest  men  in  England,  Lord  Rich, 
a  sordid,  cold,  brutal  young  fellow  who  had  inherited  the 
vast  stealings  of  his  father,  Chancellor  Rich.  She  loathed 
the  man;  she  protested  at  the  very  altar,  but  in  vain;  and 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  19 

too  late  Philip  Sidney  awoke  to  find,  as  it  would  seem  from 
some  of  his  sonnets,  that  he  had  pressed  his  suit  too 
languidly,  and  that  his  lady  was  already  given  to  another. 
It  was  then  that  he  wrote  that  series  of  sonnets,  Astrophel 
and  Stella,  on  which  his  fame  as  a  poet — and  as  a  lover — 
rests.  In  spite  of  the  over-elaborate  diction  of  the  time 
in  which  they  are  written,  I  do  not  see  how  any  one  can 
read  them  without  feeling  that  it  is  the  genuine  love  of  a 
genuine  man  that  is  written  here,  that  Sidney,  as  he  says 
in  his  first  sonnet,  looked  in  his  heart  and  wrote.  And 
let  it  be  said  in  charitable  memory  of  Penelope  Devereux, 
that  there  is  nothing  in  these  sonnets  to  cast  any  shadow 
on  her  fame.  Love  to  the  cold  and  sordid  man  to  whom 
she  had  been  wedded  was  out  of  the  question;  but  I  think 
there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  her  truth  to  him  while  Philip 
Sidney  lived.  Very  touching  and  very  significant  are  the 
earnest,  passionate  lines  in  the  eighth  song,  in  which  Sidney 
tells  how  his  lady  returned  his  love: 

Astrophel,  sayd  she,  my  loue, 

Cease,  in  these  effects,  to  proue ; 

Now  be  still,  yet  still  beleeue  me. 

Thy  griefe  more  then  death  would  grieue  me. 

If  those  eyes  you  praised,  be 
Halfe  so  deare  as  you  to  me, 
Let  me  home  returne,  starke  blinded 
Of  those  eyes,  and  blinder  minded. 

If  to  secret  of  my  hart, 

I  do  any  wish  impart, 

Where  thou  art  not  formost  placed, 

Be  both  wish  and  I  defaced. 

•  ••■••••a 

Trust  me,  while  I  thee  deny, 
In  my  selfe  the  smart  I  try; 
Tyran  Honour  doth  thus  vse  thee, 
Stella's  self  might  not  refuse  thee. 

Therefore,  deare,  this  no  more  inoue, 
Least,  though  I  leaue  not  thy  loue, 
Which  too  deep  in  me  is  framed, 
I  should  blush  when  thou  are  named. 


20    AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

But  some  two  years  after  the  marriage  of  Lady  Rich, 
Sidney  himself  married  Fanny  Walsingham,  daughter  of  his 
old  friend, — marriage,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  for  the 
only  son  of  a  great  English  house  a  necessity, — and  two  years 
later  he  died.  After  that,  much  that  was  best  in  Lady 
Rich  died  too.  Her  haughty  and  impetuous  nature  was  not 
likely  to  bear  its  bondage  meekly.  Her  imperial  beauty 
was  full  of  temptations.  When,  now  and  then,  her  face 
gleams  upon  us  in  the  poetry  or  letters  of  the  time  it  has 
oftenest  some  wild  light  of  passion  on  it.  It  has  been 
plausibly  conjectured  that  she  is  the  "dark  lady"  of 
Shakespeare's  Sonnets.  The  treatment  of  her  husband 
seems  to  have  passed  from  brutal  abuse  to  stolid  indiffer- 
ence, and  after  a  few  years  he  left  her  altogether.  Then 
came  the  wild  story  of  her  brother  Robert  to  cast  a  more 
lurid  light  and  then  a  deeper  shadow  over  her  path.  The  out- 
lines of  that  story  you  all  remember:  how  the  young  Robert 
Devereux,  with  much  of  his  sister's  beauty  and  charm  of 
manner,  was,  after  the  death  of  Leicester,  Elizabeth's 
favorite  courtier;  how  he,  too,  like  his  father  attempted 
that  fatal  Irish  business,  and  failed  more  disastrously  than 
his  father;  how  he  wasn't  fortunate  enough  to  die  in  Ire- 
land, but  came  back  to  London,  and  scolded  and  stormed 
like  a  spoiled  child,  and  at  last,  when  he  couldn't  gain  the 
favor  of  Elizabeth,  got  a  few  fellows  as  foolish  as  himself 
into  his  great  house  in  the  Strand,  and  issued  out  thence, 
one  Sunday  morning,  on  a  foolhardy  insurrection  to  do  no- 
body knew  what,  and  he  himself  least  of  all.  And  doesn't 
every  school  girl  know  how  Elizabeth,  in  mingled  sorrow 
and  pride  and  anger,  found  it  necessary  to  sign  the  warrant 
for  taking  off  the  handsome  head  of  her  last  favorite, 
Robert  Devereux,  and  how  she  never  smiled  afterward? 
In  all  that  time  one  can  see  the  restless,  fateful  figure  of 
Penelope  Devereux  flitting  hither  and  thither.  It  was  her 
ambition  goaded  by  her  misery  that  spurred  her  brother 
on  to  folly.  "She  did  urge  me  on,"  said  he,  a  few  days 
before  he  died,  "by  telling  me  how  all  my  friends  and  fol- 
lowers thought  me  a  coward,  and  that  I  had  lost  my  valour." 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  ti 

One  wonders  whether  Shakespeare  didn't  draw  Lady  Mac- 
beth from  her.  While  her  brother  lay  under  sentence  of 
death,  with  remorseful  pity  she  besieged  the  throne  for  his 
pardon;  she  entreated,  she  bribed,  she  lay  in  wait  at  Eliza- 
beth's door  and  pleaded  with  all  the  eloquence  of  love,  and 
beauty,  and  tears.  But  it  was  in  vain :  and  when  her  brother 
perished,  poor  Lady  Rich  seems  to  have  sunk  in  despair  of 
happiness  or  of  virtue.  One  sees  her  again  at  the  court  of 
James, — her  wonderful  charm  yet  undimmed ;  but  one 
doesn't  like  to  think  of  Philip  Sidney's  Stella  as  shining  in 
that  basest  of  courts. 

Yet  one  more  life  was  that  baleful  star  to  destroy  be- 
fore it  went  out.  For  years  Lady  Rich  had  one  friend 
whose  love,  if  not  honorable,  was  at  least  constant.  Lord 
Mountjoy,  Earl  of  Devonshire,  was  brave,  honest,  and  his 
honor  would  have  been  untarnished  had  he  not  loved 
Penelope  Devereux  too  well.  Through  all  the  storm  of 
her  life,  he  had  been  but  too  true  to  her,  and  for  years  the 
relations  of  Lady  Rich  with  himself  had  been  no  secret. 
He  wished  to  give  to  those  relations  the  sanction  of  law 
and  of  religion,  and  as  Lady  Rich  had  been  deserted  by 
her  wretched  husband  for  some  twelve  years,  a  divorce 
was  granted  her  by  Archbishop  Laud  and  she  was  shortly 
afterward  married  to  Lord  Mountjoy.  But  the  fate  of 
her  family  was  over  her.  There  was  some  flaw  in  the 
divorce  that  made  her  new  union  illegal.  A  storm  of  in- 
dignation fell  upon  the  head  of  Lord  Mountjoy.  The  Earl 
winced  under  the  charge,  but  he  would  never  for  a  moment 
belie  his  love  for.  the  woman  he  had  at  last  wedded.  He 
wrote  a  letter  of  passionate  exculpation  to  the  cold-blooded 
hypocrite  who  now  sat  on  the  English  throne,  he  pleaded 
with  manly  tenderness  in  the  name  of  religion  and  of 
charity  for  his  wife:  but  it  was  to  no  purpose.  With  much 
of  that  high  honor  that  feels  a  stain  like  a  wound,  he  sank 
under  the  storm  of  undeserved  opprobrium,  and  died  only 
four  months  after  his  marriage,  in  the  arms  of  his  wife. 
"The  grief  of  his  unfortunate  love,"  says  his  secretary, 
"did  bring  him  to  his  end."     With  his  death  the  star  of 


22     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Penelope  Devereux  went  out  in  impenetrable  night.  There 
is  no  later  story  of  her,  no  portrait,  no  record :  only  a  few 
years  ago  in  a  Latin  history  printed  in  Amsterdam  was 
found  the  statement  that  after  his  death  she  lay,  in  the 
robes  of  her  mourning,  night  and  day,  stretched  on  the  floor 
in  the  corner  of  her  chamber,  refusing  to  be  comforted 
except  by  death.  That  kindly  comfort  came  in  a  few 
months,  and  the  beauty,  the  idol  of  two  courts,  whose 
charms  the  greatest  poets  of  the  age  had  sung,  died  for- 
gotten and  alone. 

'In  all  the  chronicles  of  wasted  time,  when  beauty  doth 
make  beautiful  old  rhyme,  in  praise  of  ladies  dead,'  you 
shall  not  find  a  face  of  more  supreme  fascination,  a  story 
of  sadder,  sin-stained  pathos  than  that  of  Sidney's  Stella, 
Penelope  Devereux. 

To  name  the  friends  of  the  Sidney  family  would  be 
to  name  almost  all  the  most  famous  men  of  the  last  half  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  One,  there  was  among  them,  the 
friend  of  the  Sidneys  from  boyhood  who  seems  to  me  the 
typical,  representative  figure  of  his  age.  For  if  we  look 
for  one  man  in  whom  we  may  find  combined  the  restless 
adventure,  the  splendid  daring,  the  romantic  sentiment  at 
once  wild  and  tender,  the  exquisite  literary  tastes,  the  noble 
patriotism,  and,  above  all,  that  high  and  reverent  religious 
feeling  which  blended  love  of  country  with  love  of  God  and 
made  strength  and  valor  beautiful, — all  these  sentiments 
so  characteristic  of  the  Elizabethan  age  at  its  best, — where 
shall  we  find  them  together,  I  say,  save  in  this  man,  Walter 
Raleigh?  What  a  world  it  was  in  which  he  lived  I  What  a 
vast  horizon  of  hopes  1  What  a  rushing  torrent  of  passion ! 
What  a  sinewy  strength  of  endeavor  in  that  Elizabethan 
life!  And  what  men  were  on  earth  in  those  days!  For  a 
preacher  a  Hooker,  for  a  thinker  a  Bacon,  for  poets  a 
Marlowe,  a  Ben  Jonson,  a  Spenser,  a  Shakespeare;  on  the 
throne  a  woman  who  had  dared  badger  every  Sovereign 
in  Europe ;  and  all  round  the  world,  sailing  under  the  cross 
of  St.  George,  Englishmen  with  their  hearts  beating  fast 
and  their  imaginations  on  fire.    And  in  such  an  age,  among 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  23 

such  men,  Walter  Raleigh  seems  to  tower  above  them  all. 
What  a  career!  Born  when  the  Smithfield  martyr  fires 
were  just  flickering  their  last,  nourished  on  tales  of  adven- 
ture and  heroism,  he  drew  his  virgin  sword  when  only  a  lad 
in  the  holy  cause  of  suffering  Protestantism  in  the  Nether- 
lands; he  saw  great  Conde  fall  at  Jarnac;  he  stood  silently 
by  in  horror  on  the  night  of  St.  Bartholomew.  And  he 
never  forgot  those  days.  When  he  stormed  Cadiz;  when 
he  hurried  over  the  Atlantic  again  and  again  to  fight  the 
Spaniard  amid  the  pestilence  of  the  tropics,  or  to  fix  his 
hold  upon  the  fairest  lands  of  the  New  World  for  his 
virgin  Queen;  when  he  laughed  with  stern  joy  to  see  the 
great  Armada  sailing  up  the  channel  to  its  doom:  through 
it  all  he  bore  the  consecrated  bravery  of  a  man  who  had 
early  taken  upon  himself  a  solemn  mission  of  unalterable 
hostility  to  the  foe  of  his  country  and  of  his  religion.  Mis- 
takes, yes;  sins,  he  has  to  answer  for;  but  this  high  purpose 
sheds  around  his  whole  life  the  bright  air  of  heroism. 
"Damnably  proud,"  says  poor-spirited  old  gossip  Aubrey; 
"too  ambitious,"  say  more  modern  historians.  But 
Raleigh's  ambition  was  of  no  mean,  selfish  sort.  With 
truth  could  he  say  the  great  ends  he  aimed  at  were  "his 
country's,  God's,  and  truth's." 

At  home  he  was  the  ornament  of  his  age.  No  mean 
poet  himself,  he  was  the  best  friend  of  other  poets;  but 
for  his  kind  encouragement  the  world  might  have  never 
seen  the  great  epic  of  the  age,  Edmund  Spenser's  Faery 
Queen.  He  had  the  silver  tongue  of  the  orator,  and  in  his 
History  of  the  World  there  are  passages  of  deep  and 
moving  eloquence,  so  solemn  and  so  grand  that  I  am  sure 
no  other  Englishman  of  his  age  could  have  written  them 
save  William  Shakespeare  only.  And  more  than  all  else, 
how  wise  a  statesman  he  was.  It  wasn't,  you  may  be  sure, 
any  such  pretty  trick  as  the  throwing  of  his  gay  cloak 
before  the  passing  feet  of  Queen  Bess  that  won  him  his 
high  place  in  her  regard.  She  knew  Walter  Raleigh  for  a 
wise  as  well  as  a  gallant  man.  His  views  of  the  relations 
of  England  to  Protestantism,  his  colonial  policy,  his  com- 


24     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

mercial  policy,  were  all  far  in  advance  of  his  time.  We 
Americans,  in  especial,  ought  to  be  the  first  to  honor  his 
memory,  for  we  owe  more  to  him  than  to  any  other  English- 
man. It  was  Walter  Raleigh,  rather  than  any  other  Eng- 
lishman, who  first  determined  that  the  empire  of  this  new 
world  must  fall  into  the  hands  of  Protestant  England  rather 
than  into  the  hands  of  Papal  Spain.  Above  all,  save 
America, — his  Virginia  as  he  wanted  to  call  it, — save 
America  for  England  and  for  the  faith.  To  make  that 
sure  he  spent  his  hopes,  his  treasure,  and  his  blood;  and 
would  have  willingly  given  all,  had  they  been  twenty  times 
as  rich.  And  he  made  that  sure.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
say,  as  Dean  Stanley  once  said,  that  Walter  Raleigh  is  the 
father  of  the  United  States  of  America. 

Soldier,  sailor,  poet,  orator,  courtier,  statesman,  hero, 
— his  life  swept  around  the  whole  orbit  of  human  endeavor 
and  human  achievement;  and  the  record  of  it  is  a  power 
and  an  inspiration  still.  With  all  his  faults,  he  was  a  manly 
champion  of  that  Christianity  that  had  iron  in  its  blood, 
and  thought  some  things  worth  dying  for:  he  is  a  goodly 
saint  of  the  Protestant  calendar. 

One  famous  group  of  men  there  was  who  shared 
largely  in  Raleigh's  spirit,  and  who  always  had  Raleigh's 
admiring  friendship,  and  Sidney's  too,  so  long  as  Sidney 
lived.  Go  back  in  your  imagination!  if  you  can,  to  the 
19th  of  July,  1588,  and  to  the  yard  qf  the  little  seaward 
looking  Pelican  Inn  at  Plymouth.  It  is  almost  sundown, 
and,  in  the  cool  of  the  day,  a  group  of  men  are  just  be- 
ginning a  game  of  bowls.  They  are  almost  all  Devonshire 
men,  born  in  sight  of  blue  water.  There  was  Raleigh  him- 
self, a  look  of  anxiety  on  his  face,  perhaps,  that  July  after- 
noon,— for  there  was  cause, — but  a  look  of  command,  too, 
we  may  be  sure.  "He  did  ever  have,"  says  old  Aubrey, 
"an  awfulness  and  ascendancy  in  his  aspect  over  other 
mortals."  Near  Raleigh  that  afternoon,  we  know,  was  his 
old  friend  John  Davis,  who  had  paddled  with  him  on  the 
Dart  when  they  were  boys  together.  Since  those  days, 
John  Davis  had  battled  with  wave  and  tempest  and  the 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  25 

worst  aangcrs  of  hunger  and  mutiny  in  the  unknown  seas 
around  the  South  Pole,  in  a  voyage  the  story  of  which  is 
stranger  than  any  romance,  and  only  the  summer  before 
he  had  struggled  up  through  the  icy  strait  that  bears  his 
name,  in  a  leaky  little  cutter  of  thirty  tons,  till  he  got  four 
degrees  nearer  the  frozen  pole  than  any  ship  had  ever  gone 
before.  Hardy  seaman,  brave  Christian  man,  was  this 
Davis,  with  the  quick  imagination  and  the  warm  heart  of  a 
poet  inside  him,  too,  as  his  letters  will  show. 

Near  him  was  a  man  who  looks  no  poet,  but  a  true  sea- 
dog, 

long;,  and  lank,  and  brown, 
As  is  the  ribbed  sea-sand. 

His  leathern  face  has  been  tanned  in  the  tropics  and  frozen 
at  both  poles.      He  is  slow  of  speech,  but  he  always  remem- 
bers how,  when  he,  who  but  a  little  while  before  was  only  a 
poor  sailor  lad,  was  about  to  sail  away  with  a  ship  of  his 
own,  his  glorious  Queen  deigned  to  come  down  to  Greenwich 
where  his  good  ship  lay,  to  set  her  royal  foot  on  board,  to 
put  her  royal  hand  in  his,   and  to  say,   uGod  speed  you, 
Martin   Krobisher."     That  was  his   reward;  he   asked  no 
better.    In  the  company  that  July  afternoon  was  the  com- 
mander of  them  all,  Lord  Howard  of  Effingham,  Lord  High 
Admiral  of  England;  there,  too,  was  the  tall  majestic  form 
of    Sir    Richard    Grenville, — the    Spaniard's    Terror,    men 
called  him.     And  there  in  the  very  center  of  the  group  was 
an  old  veteran  of  the  seas,  a  very  Ancient  Mariner.      You 
could  hardly  have  told  how  old  he  was,  for  he  had  a  sailor's 
stoop  and  a  sliding  gait,  a  rusty  frowze  of  hair  and  a  gen- 
eral look  as  if  he  had  been  salted  and  dried.     That  was  old 
Sir  John  Hawkins,  the  man  who  made  the  English  navy, 
and  taught  most  of  the  men  around  him  what  they  knew 
of  seamanship.     He  had  a  deal  of  fight  in  him  yet,  as  the 
Spaniards   found  before  a  week  was  over.     And  near  Sir 
John,  stood  his  favorite  pupil,  the  last  of  the  group  and 
perhaps   the   most   striking   figure    of   them   all — forty-one 
years  old,  short  and  stoutly  built,  a  round  head  and  a  stiff 


26     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

frizzle  of  hair  over  it,  gray  eyes  unusually  long  and  narrow, 
through  which  he  looked  with  a  kind  of  squint,  and  a 
stubble  of  beard  about  mouth  and  chin.  That  was  Sir 
Francis  Drake,  Vice-Admiral  of  the  Fleet.  The  world  knew 
who  Drake  was.  It  was  seventeen  years  before,  when  he 
was  only  twenty-four  years  old,  that  he  climbed  the  tree  on 
the  peak  in  Darien,  and  looking  out  thence  with  eager  eyes 
got  his  first  glimpse  of  the  great  Pacific,  and  resolved,  God 
willing,  to  sail  an  English  ship  in  those  seas.  Since  then  he 
had  sailed  art  English  ship  in  almost  every  sea  under  the 
whole  heaven,  and  "singed  the  Spaniard's  beard"  in  many  a 
hot  encounter.  That  afternoon  in  the  yard  of  the  Pelican 
Inn,  he  was  just  about  to  begin  the  game.  He  slowly  bent 
forward,  swung  back  his  arm,  and  held  the  ball  poised  an 
instant  before  he  should  hurl  it  down  the  alley;  when  in 
that  instant  there  rushed  in  a  weather-beaten  tar  shouting 
to  the  Lord  Admiral,  "My  Lordl  My  Lordl  they're 
coomin' !  they're  coomin' !  I  saw  'em  off  the  Lizard  last 
night!  They're  coomin'  full-sail,  hundreds  of  'em, 
a-darkenin  the  waters!"  Drake  stayed  his  uplifted  hand 
a  moment  only,  then  sent  the  ball  thundering  down  the 
planks,  and  coolly  turning  to  the  Admiral  said,  "There  will 
be  time  to  finish  the  game,  my  Lord,  and  then  we'll  go  out 
and  give  the  Dons  a  thrashing!"  How  sound  a  thrashing 
they  gave  the  Dons  of  the  Spanish  Armada  in  the  week 
that  followed,  every  one  knows.  If  the  thrashing  had  gone 
the  other  way,  you  and  I  would  not  be  living  in  a  free 
Protestant  land  to-day. 

But  wonderful  as  the  victory  over  the  Armada  was, 
it  seems  to  me  one  of  the  least  of  their  exploits.  The 
story  of  what  those  men  dared  in  the  last  quarter  of 
the  sixteenth  century  thrills  me  as  nothing  else.  Do  you 
know  anything  like  it?  It  is  a  nobler  epic  than  Homer 
ever  sang,  a  grander  tale  than  that  of  Troy.  Davis 
in  his  little  pinnace  at  midnight  steering  through  the  tor- 
tuous strait  of  Magellan  that  no  English  keel  had  ever  cut 
before;  Drake  stealing  like  a  shadow  up  the  west  coast 
of  South  America,   swooping  down  upon   Spanish   settle- 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  27 

ments,    and    then    striking   boldly    out   into    the    unknown 
Pacific  to  sail  around  the  world;  good  Humphrey  Gilbert 
exploring  all  the  coast  of  North  America  in  a  cutter  of  ten 
tons  burthen — ten  tons,  think  of  it! — there  is  no  end  to  that 
story  of  heroism.    These  men  were  England's  true  knights, 
for  it  was  not  for  mere  gain  or  glory  that  they  fought. 
At  the  bottom  of  all  this  romantic  heroism,  there  was  a 
profound  religious  sentiment.     We  shall  never  read  aright 
that   glorious   page   of   history   until   we   understand   that 
singular  combination  of  the  ardor  of  religion  and  the  ardor 
of  ambition  which,  centuries  before,  hurried  all  Europe  to 
the   tomb  of  the  Saviour,   and  now  fired  all  England  to 
a  new  crusade  against  the  abominations  of  Rome  and  the 
cruelties   of  Spain.      There   was  need.      On   the   continent 
Protestantism    was    fighting    a    losing    battle.      With    the 
triumph  of  the  Guises,  France  was  lost  to  the  cause.     The 
Netherlands  were  writhing  under  the  armed  heel  of  Philip. 
Priests  of  the  new  order  of  Jesus  were  skulking  in  every 
corner   of   England,    darkly   weaving   no    one   knew   what 
slimy  webs  of  intrigue,  carrying  daggers  meant  for  the  heart 
of  Elizabeth  herself.     What  Rome  could  do  the  Eve  of 
St.  Bartholomew  told.     What  Spain  was  doing  every  lad 
of  a  dozen  years  knew  well  enough.     She  had  fixed  her 
clutch  upon  the  fairest  portions  of  the  New  World;  she 
was  slaying  its  savages  and  gathering  its  gold.     Every  year 
her   soldiery   were   butchering   the    inoffensive    Indians   by 
thousands;  every  year  her  treasure-fleet  came  home  groan- 
ing under   its   load   of   ill-gotten   gain.      Nay,   Englishmen 
needed  not  to  look  so  far  to  see  the  work  of  Spain.     Over 
the  Channel  in  the  Netherlands,  under  the  very  shadow  of 
the  English  coast,  Parma  and  his  red-handed  men  were  about 
their  ghastly  work. 

England  was  left  alone  as  the  champion  of  Prot- 
estantism. All  the  noblest  men  who  made  that  history 
felt  it  to  be  so,  accepted  the  commission  as  if  it  were 
divine.  Spain  was  not  only  the  foe  of  England:  she  was  the 
foe  of  humanity,  the  foe  of  God.  It  was  in  this  spirit  that 
their  noblest  deeds  were  done.     Read  the  story  of  it  and 


28     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

see.  On  Hawkins'  ship  the  record  tells  us,  "we  gathered 
together  morning  and  evening  to  serve  God."  When  Luke 
Fox's  ship  sails  away, — I  am  quoting  from  Froude, — the 
crew  agree:  "ist.  That  all  the  company  shall  duly  repair 
every  day  at  the  call  of  the  bell  to  hear  prayers,  in  a  godly 
and  devout  manner  as  Christians  ought.  2nd.  That  no  man 
shall  swear  by  the  name  of  God,  or  use  any  profane  oath." 
"The  ice  was  strong,"  says  one  of  Frobisher's  men  in  telling 
the  story  of  their  liberation  from  the  grip  of  the  polar  sea, 
"The  ice  was  strong,  but  God  was  stronger  1"  When  Hum- 
phrey Gilbert's  ten-ton  ship,  hammered  almost  to  pieces 
on  the  icy  rocks  of  Labrador,  was  slowly  going  down  in 
mid-ocean,  the  master,  standing  on  deck,  called  to  his  com- 
panions, "Be  of  good  cheer,  men;  we  are  as  near  heaven  by 
sea,  as  by  land."  "A  speech,"  says  the  old  chronicler,  "very 
well  becoming  a  soldier  resolute  in  Christ  Jesus  as  I  can 
testify  he  was."  The  morning  after  his  game  of  bowls, 
Drake,  looking  coolly  out  upon  the  Spanish  sails  that  whit- 
ened all  the  Channel,  wrote,  "By  the  grace  of  God,  if  I  live, 
I  doubt  not  to  handle  the  matter  with  this  Duke  of  Sldonia 
as  he  shall  wish  himself  at  home  among  his  orange  trees; 
only  God  give  us  grace  to  depend  upon  Him."  Sir  Richard 
Grenville,  after  having  for  fifteen  hours  in  his  one  ship,  with 
only  a  hundred  men,  fought  fifteen  Spanish  galleons,  manned 
by  ten  thousand  men,  and  after  having  sunk  two  of  them, 
and  disabled  a  half  dozen  more,  his  own  ship  riddled 
through  and  through  and  leaking  at  every  seam,  at  last,  shot 
three  times  through  the  body,  lay  down  to  die,  with  these 
words  on  his  lips :  "Here  die  I,  Richard  Grenville,  with  a 
joyful  and  a  quiet  mind,  for  that  I  have  ended  my  life  as  a 
true  soldier  ought  to  do,  that  has  fought  for  his  country,  his 
queen,  his  honour,  and  his  religion." 

These  men,  and  such  as  these,  I  call  England's  knights. 
Rough,  hardy,  adventurous,  often  mistaken,  often  sinning, 
they  were  yet  honest  Christian  men.  They  thought  them- 
selves fighting  the  battles  of  God :  and  for  my  part  I  believe 
they  were  right.  Certainly  in  these  tamer  days  it  is  inspir- 
ing to  read  the  record  of  downright  men  who  thought  the 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  29 

truth  worth  fighting  tor  and  believed  the  devil  something 
more  than  a  metaphor. 

But  time  would  fail  me  to  tell  of  all  the  great  names  that 
will  rise  to  your  recollection  as  you  lie  on  the  grass  in  the 
old  castle  of  Ludlow  and  dream  of  the  days  when  the  Sid- 
neys lived  there.  You  will  think  of  those  writers  in  whose 
pages,  after  all,  we  may  see  the  liveliest  picture  of  that 
bygone  time.  You  will  think  of  that  shy  and  retiring  poet, 
Edmund  Spenser,  bosom  friend  of  Sidney  and  of  Raleigh, 
who,  rinding  no  place  in  the  sterner  struggles  of  that  battling 
age  tor  a  temper  so  mild  as  his,  yet  feeling  none  the  less 
at  his  heart  the  thrill  of  a  poet's  and  a  patriot's  sympathy 
with  it  all,  withdrew  to  his  retirement  in  Ireland,  and  put 
all  that  was  noblest  in  that  age  into  the  deathless  verse 
of  his  great  epic,  the  epic  of  England,  the  Faery  Land, 
and  of  Elizabeth,  the  Faery  Queen. 

Or  you  may,  perhaps,  for  some  moments  imagine  that 
you  are  in  the  London  of  Sidney  and  Raleigh,  and  that  you 
have  taken  boat  across  the  Thames  on  some  sunny  after- 
noon, and  made  your  way  by  three  of  the  clock  to  that  curi- 
ous, tall,  six-sided,  wooden  building  just  erected  in  Bankside 
over  which  a  big  red  flag  is  flying.  You  go  in  at  a  door  above 
which  is  an  effigy  of  Atlas  bearing  his  Globe — for  this  is  the 
New  Globe  Theater;  you  stand  upon  the  ground  among  a 
motley  crowd,  but  you  can  see  the  rush-strewn  stage  well 
enough,  with  the  gay  young  gallants  who  sit  talking  before 
the  curtain.  A  trumpet  somewhere  blares  three  times:  the 
curtain  is  drawn  aside  to  show  a  bare  stage  with  a  big  painted 
sign  at  the  back  marked  Verona,  and  lo  !  there  comes  Tybalt, 
and  Mercutio,  and  Romeo,  and  at  that  odd  little  window  in 
the  background  a  boy  in  girl's  apparel  is  speaking  out  the 
words  of  Juliet.  And  among  the  young  fellows  at  the  front 
of  the  stage,  on  the  side,  you  may  perhaps  catch  a  glimpse 
of  an  eager  face  with  a  forehead  so  high  and  eyes  so  still 
that  there  is  yet  a  look  of  quiet  in  it, — thinking  perhaps 
of  his  Juliet  whom  he  has  left  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  and  of 
his  children  there.  Anybody  will  tell  you  that  this  is 
the  new  playwright,  Will  Shakespeare,  keen  and  masterful 


30    AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

young  fellow,  who  wrote  the  play  you  are  watching  and  owns 
a  good  part  of  the  theater  you  are  in.  But  no  one  will  tell 
you  that  this  young  man  is  the  greatest  writer  this  world 
has  yet  been  able  to  produce,  widest,  wisest  mind  of  his 
great  age,  and  unmatched  in  all  ages  thus  far.  Posterity  is 
just  learning  that  to-day. 

Or  in  fancy,  you  will  take  a  stroll  at  nightfall  down  the 
long  street  of  the  Strand, — pleasant  green  fields  about  you 
at  Charing  Cross  where  you  start,  pleasant  fields  all  the 
way  on  your  left,  where  now  is  the  "multitudinous  dust- 
whirl  of  great  London,"  and  on  your  right  noble  new  palaces 
with  broad  gardens  that  run  down  to  the  grassy  banks  of 
the  small,  fair-flowing  Thames.  And  just  as  you  reach  the 
City,  and  pass  in  under  Temple  Bar,  looking  for  an  inn,  you 
shall  see  a  snug  one  just  at  your  right.  On  the  creaking 
sign  that  hangs  at  the  door  St.  Dunstan  is  pulling  the  Devil 
by  the  nose,  for  this  is  the  Devil  Tavern.  It  will  pay  you 
to  go  in.  Quite  likely  you  will  find  Raleigh  here,  likely 
enough  Will  Shakespeare  too,  and  over  the  door  of  the 
inner  room  as  you  go  in  you  see  the  beckoning  invitation, 

Welcome  all  who  lead  or  follow 
To  the  Oracle  of  Apollo. 

Yonder  at  the  head  of  the  board — nowhere  else  you 
may  be  sure — sits  the  master  spirit  here.  Mountain  belly 
and  rocky  face,  tun  of  canary  on  legs,  hard-headed  old  con- 
troversialist, obstinate  as  the  east  wind,  and  with  an  egotism 
that  fairly  rose  into  the  regions  of  the  sublime, — you 
wouldn't  take  him  for  a  poet.  But  he  was  a  poet,  neverthe- 
less, and  no  mean  philosopher  beside.  Not  a  very  great 
man,  perhaps,  this  Ben  Jonson,  but  certainly  a  very  big 
one.  He  carried  about  a  deal  of  hard  common  sense,  and 
he  could  use  it  on  occasion.  It  would  have  been  wise  to 
agree  with  him,  for  like  his  namesake  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  later,  old  Sam  Johnson,  he  was  a  hard  hitter  in 
argument,  and  if  his  pistol  missed  fire,  he  would  knock  you 
down  with  the  butt  end  of  it.  But  there  was  somewhere 
inside  that  great  hulking  body  of  his  a  spark  of  pure  Prome- 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  31 

thean  fire,  and  now  and  then  there  broke  from  him  some  ray 
of  poetry,  keen  and  clear,  and  fair  of  rosy  hue,  that  shines 
like  a  diamond  through  the  centuries.  He  had  a  gay  and 
airy  fancy  such  as  no  other  singer  of  his  day  could  equal — 
Ben  Jonson  was  Sam  Johnson  plus  Puck.  But  he  was 
among  the  last  of  the  Elizabethans,  and  his  name  carries 
us  out  of  that  great  age  of  the  Sidneys  in  which  your 
thoughts  have  dwelt  for  a  little  time. 

But  before  the  afternoon  sun  sinks  behind  the  broken 
rim  of  the  castle  wall  and  the  old  warden  limps  in  to  tell 
you  it  is  time  to  go,  there  is  one  other  scene  ever  memorable 
in  these  walls  that  your  memory  will  repaint.  It  was  in 
1634.  Sidney  had  been  in  his  soldier's  grave  for  almost 
fifty  years,  and  the  little  band  of  idealists  who  had  inspired 
England  with  high  ideals  of  gentle  life  and  reproduced  for 
a  little  time  all  that  was  noblest  in  the  olden  chivalry, 
broken  first  by  Sidney's  fall,  had  dropped  one  by  one  away. 
Spenser,  the  poet,  chased  from  his  burning  home  in  Ireland, 
had  died  alone  in  an  inn  of  King  Street,  Westminster; 
Raleigh,  the  hero,  fallen  on  evil  days,  had  gone  to  his  dun- 
geon and  thence  to  his  scaffold;  and  Elizabeth  herself,  the 
center  of  all  this  romantic  devotion,  had  grown  old,  and 
crazed,  and  despairing,  and  died:  upon  her  throne  sat  that 
learned  dunce,  that  misbegotten  pedant  whose  mother  was  a 
fiend  and  whose  father  was  a  fool,  and  who  had  less  poetry 
in  his  obstinate,  and  conceited,  and  canting  soul  than  the 
straitest  Puritan  in  his  realm.  And  after  some  years  of 
boasting  inefficiency,  this  James  had  gone  the  way  of  all 
kings  and  his  son,  Charles,  reigned  in  his  stead, — poor  easy 
Charles,  of  gentle  manners,  voluptuous  tastes,  tyrannical 
principles,  and  elastic  conscience.  The  Elizabethan  days 
were  over.  The  dream  had  passed,  the  glamour  faded 
quite  away.  Money-getting,  trade,  sciences,  philosophy, 
much  jangle  of  controversy, — all  this  in  abundance,  but  the 
great  age  was  by.  Provincial  Ludlow  in  those  days  was  no 
better  than  the  rest  of  England, — quite  likely  worse,  if  we 
may  judge  from  what  a  lean,  sallow-faced,  crop-haired 
Shropshire  servant  boy  of  sixteen  who  lived  here  for  a  year 


32     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

or  so  then  reported  of  it.  Richard  Baxter  used  to  say  in 
after  life  that  he  had  learned  nothing  good  as  a  boy  at 
Ludlow,  and  that  had  he  stayed  there  much  longer  he 
should  have  forgotten  all  the  teachings  of  his  pious 
father. 

It  was,  then,  in  this  later  and  lower  time  on  Michaelmas 
evening  of  1634,  that  this  old  castle  of  Ludlow  blazed  with 
unusual  festivities.  For  a  new  President  of  the  Welsh 
Marches,  and  the  last  one,  had  come  to  take  up  his  official 
residence  here, — the  Earl  of  Bridgewater,  no  unworthy  suc- 
cessor of  the  Sidneys.  In  his  family  were  preserved  the 
traditions  of  a  nobler  age.  His  father  was  the  great  Chan- 
cellor Ellesmere;  his  mother-in-law — who  was  oddly  his 
stepmother  too — was  Alice  Spencer  of  Althorp,  the  rela- 
tive and  friend  of  our  great  poet,  and  besung  in  her  girl- 
hood by  him  in  one  of  his  best  poems,  and  by  a  host  of 
other  lesser  singers  of  the  Elizabethan  time.  This  Earl  of 
Bridgewater  is  now  a  grave  man  of  fifty-four,  and  he  has 
brought  with  him  to  Ludlow  his  two  black-haired  boys  of 
eleven  and  twelve,  and  his  pretty  daughter  Alice,  a  year 
or  so  older.  It  is  then  to  welcome  this  Earl  and  his  family 
that  the  old  castle  has  put  on  its  gayety  to-night.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  something  of  special  brilliancy  is  preparing  in 
the  great  hall. 

As  you  lie  on  the  grassy  turf  which  is  now  its  only 
floor,  it  is  easy  to  imagine  that  scene  of  more  than 
two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  On  one  side  of  the  hall, 
in  the  great  fireplace  there,  a  ruddy  fire  is  glowing  and 
crackling,  and  in  spite  of  all  the  tapers,  casting  flickering 
lights  across  upon  the  three,  long,  narrow  lancet  windows 
opposite.  Between  the  two  doors  at  the  south  end,  a  stage 
has  been  set  up,  and  behind  the  curtain  you  hear  the  notes  of 
the  musicians  tuning  their  instruments.  In  through  the  door 
at  the  lower  left  hand  comes  streaming  the  company.  Now 
they  are  in  their  seats;  there  is  a  rustle,  a  murmur,  a  tinkle 
of  the  bell,  a  hush,  the  stage  is  darkened  to  show  it  is  night, 
and  the  curtain  is  drawn  aside  discovering  a  wild  wood;  and 
"swift  as  the  sparkle  of  a  glancing  star,"  to  soft  music, 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  33 

glides  in  a  tall,  slight  young  man,  habited  as  a  spirit,  and 
as  the  music  pauses  you  catch  his  opening  words: 

Before  the  starry  threshold  of  Jove's  court 

My  mansion  is,  where  those  immortal  shapes 

Of  bright,  aerial  Spirits  live  insphered 

In  regions  mild  of  calm  and  serene  air, 

Above  the  smoke  and  stir  of  this  dim  spot 

Which  men  call  Earth,  and,  with  low-thoughted  care, 

Confined,  and  pestered  in  this  pinfold  here, 

Strive  to  keep  up  a  frail  and  feverish  being, 

Unmindful  of  the  crown  that  Virtue  gives. 

This  young  man  is  Mr.  Lawes,  the  well-known  musician  of 
London,  who  has  arranged  the  music  and  scenery  for  this 
masque;  and  the  words  he  is  speaking  were  written  for  the 
occasion  by  a  young  friend  of  his  not  much  known  yet,  but 
likely  in  the  judgment  of  some  to  be  heard  of  by  and  by, — 
the  ingenious  young  Mr.  John  Milton,  recently  student  of 
Christ's  College,  Cambridge.  Mr.  Milton  has  written  some 
verses,  but  never  dared  to  print  any  as  yet,  and  he  has  never 
before  had  so  large  a  circle  of  hearers  as  this  evening  at 
Ludlow  Castle. 

When  you  and  I  read  that  masque  of  Comus,  how 
it  all  seems  to  come  back  to  us  as  if  we  had  ourselves 
seen  it:  the  great  hall  with  its  deep-embayed  windows, 
arched  roof,  and  tapestry-hung  walls;  this  bright  company, 
the  two  black-eyed  boys  of  the  Earl  as  the  two  brothers 
and  pretty  Alice  Egerton  as  the  lady  of  the  masque,  speak- 
ing out  with  soft  and  solemn-breathing  sound  those  lines 
of  matchless  poetry.  And  if  the  company  that  night  had 
ears  to  hear,  what  must  they  have  thought  of  Mr.  Milton's 
masque  of  Comus.  Nothing  like  it  had  been  heard  in 
England  since  the  voice  of  Shakespeare  grew  silent  twenty 
years  before;  nothing  so  beautiful  has  ever  been  heard  in 
England  since.  It  was  one  more  strain  of  the  old  Eliza- 
bethan music,  high,  and  clear,  and  pure,  and  more  sedately 
sweet.  Something  of  the  old  passionate  ardor  is  gone,  per- 
haps, but  it  is  still  the  tremulous  sensitiveness  to  beauty, 
the    high    imagination,    the    knightly    love    of    truth,    of    a 


34    AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Spenser  and  a  Sidney  that  lives  in  these  lines, — lines  so 
perfect  that  they  shine  aloft  like  stars  forever,  high,  still, 
serene.  It  was  fitting  that  this,  Milton's  best  poem,  should 
first  have  been  heard  in  the  hall  of  the  Sidneys.  For  it 
was  the  last  note  of  that  elder  music.  No  one  but  Milton 
knew  the  secret  of  that  strain,  and  even  he  soon  lost  the 
mastery  of  it.  When  next  he  sang,  there  was  a  jarring 
note  of  discord  in  his  song,  a  distant  sound  of  coming  strife. 
In  Comus  the  young  Milton  pleads  with  the  fire  of  a 
Raleigh  and  the  imagination  of  a  Spenser  for  the  union  of 
all  that  is  good  with  all  that  is  fair.  But  it  was  too  late. 
Much  of  the  high  devotion  to  truth  and  duty  lived  on, 
indeed,  but  too  often  united  with  narrowness  of  sympathy 
and  dimness  of  vision.  The  stern  logic  of  events  seemed 
effecting  a  divorce  between  the  ethical  and  the  aesthetical 
elements  of  English  character;  the  poets  lost  their  purity, 
and  the  Puritans  lost  their  poetry.  Englishmen  were  taking 
sides  in  a  long  and  bitter  quarrel,  in  which  victory  for 
either  side  could  not  be  an  unmixed  good.  It  was  no  longer 
the  large,  united,  heroic  Elizabethan  England  of  the  Faery 
Queen.  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land  was  be- 
clouded by  the  smoke  of  battle,  and  then  faded  into  common 
day. 

It  is  then  with  this  last  strain  of  the  elder  music  in  our 
ears  that  we  may  well  go  out  at  sundown  from  the  walls 
of  the  old  castle.  As  we  pass  again  through  the  high- 
arched  gate,  under  :he  grinning  teeth  of  the  rusty  portcullis, 
we  shall  hardly  care  to  remember  that  in  that  little  room 
over  the  gate,  thirty  years  later  when  the  Puritan  cause 
had  been  won  and  lost  again,  a  witty  satirist  sat  down  to 
write  a  poem  of  rattling  doggerel  that  should  turn  the 
ridicule  of  a  dissolute  age  against  a  fallen  cause,  and  wake 
wild  laughter  in  the  throats  of  fools.  We  shall  hardly  care 
to  remember  that  Samuel  Butler's  Hudibras  was  written  to 
mock  the  cause  for  which  Milton  fought,  within  the  very 
walls  where  Sidney  dwelt.  So  rather,  as  we  go  down  the 
hill  to  our  inn,  and  turn  to  get  a  last  look  at  the  old  castle 
in  the  long  lingering  English  twilight,   and  still   feel  the 


AN  OLD  CASTLE  35 

vague  sense  of  sympathy  for  all  the  varying  pathos  of 
human  hope,  and  ambition,  and  glory  gone  and  crumbled 
like  its  crumbling  walls;  for  the  story  ever  old  of  human 
life,  how  young  and  bright  soever,  passing  too  soon  to 
death  and  dull  oblivion;  we  will  couple  with  our  last  look 
the  closing  lines  of  that  last  and  noblest  poem  ever  heard 
within  the  walls  of  Ludlow,  words  which  sum  up  the  les- 
sons we  may  read  in  all  that  part  of  the  past  which  is 
really  immortal : 

Heaven  hath  timely  tried  their  youth, 
Their  faith,  their  patience,  and  their  truth, 
And  sent  them  here  through  hard  assays 
With  a  crown  of  deathless  praise. 


Mortals,  that  would  follow  me, 
Love  Virtue,  she  alone  is  free; 
She  can  teach  ye  how  to  climb 
Higher  than  the  spheary  chime: 
Or,  if  Virtue  feeble  were, 
Heaven  itself  would  stoop  to  her. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT 

WHEN,  about  1598,  Shakespeare  had  finished  that 
great  cycle  of  historical  dramas  which  culminated 
in  the  Henry  IV  and  the  Henry  V,  he  betook 
himself  for  a  time  exclusively  to  comedy.  For  three  or 
four  years  he  seems  to  have  written  nothing  else.  Why 
this  was  we  cannot  now  tell.  It  may  possibly  have  been 
because  comedy  was  wanted  by  the  theatrical  company  for 
which  he  was  writing,  or  for  some  other  such  purely  ex- 
ternal reason.  But  one  naturally  prefers  to  think  that  after 
the  stress  of  passionate  feeling  and  heroic  action  which  for 
some  five  years  he  had  been  depicting  in  his  great  histories 
and  his  early  tragedy  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  he  craved  variety 
and  relief  and  gladly  turned  to  the  more  lightsome  side  of 
human  experience  and  the  more  playful  and  humorous 
phases  of  character.  Two  comedies,  indeed,  had  probably 
been  written  during  the  years  in  which  he  was  finishing  the 
Henry  IV  and  the  Henry  V ;  but  these  two  comedies — 
The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  and  The  Taming  of  the 
Shrew — seem  to  lie  upon  one  side  of  the  main  course  of 
Shakespeare's  work.  He  certainly  did  not  put  the  best  of 
himself  into  them.  It  is  as  if  he  turned  them  off  rapidly, 
perhaps  to  meet  some  incidental  demand,  while  his  thought 
and  interest  were  mainly  given  to  other  work.  The  Taming 
of  the  Shrew,  all  the  critics,  I  think,  now  agree,  is  only  in 
part  Shakespeare's  work,  being  probably  an  old  play  hur- 
riedly patched  up  by  him,  and  then  enlarged  at  a  later  day 
by  some  other  hand.  And  The  Merry  Wives,  though  it  is 
Shakespeare's  throughout,  must,  it  seems  to  me,  have  been 
written  at  the  suggestion  of  some  unwise  admirer  of  Fal- 
staff  who  thought  it  would  be  vastly  diverting  to  see  the  fat 
knight  in  love.  But  one  could  wish  that  Shakespeare  had 
declined  to  listen  to  any  such   suggestion,   even   though   it 

36 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  37 

came,  as  tradition  asserts,  from  Elizabeth  herself;  for 
Falstaff  in  The  Merry  Wives  is  certainly  translated  worse 
than  Bottom  ever  was.  Only  Sir  Hugh  and  Slender  and 
Mistress  Anne,  they  are  delightful  and  in  the  true  Shake- 
spearian manner. 

But  when  Shakespeare  had  well  finished  the  histories  and 
was  at  liberty  to  turn  all  his  energies  into  comedy,  he  wrote 
those  three  most  delightful  plays,  the  Much  Ado  About 
Nothing,  the  Twelfth  Night,  the  As  You  Like  It.  I  take 
it  these  are  the  best  examples  of  Shakespeare's  pure  comedy. 
It  is  true  that  he  had  already  begun  in  the  historical  plays 
to  unite  tragic  and  comic  elements,  and  some  of  his  later 
works,  like  The  Winter's  Tale,  combine  the  characteristics 
of  comedy  and  tragedy  in  proportions  so  nearly  equal  that 
they  cannot  with  any  propriety  be  called  by  either  name, 
but  are  best  termed  romances.  But  in  these  three  plays, 
especially  in  Twelfth  Night  and  As  You  Like  It,  we  have 
pure  comedy  in  its  most  typical  Shakespearian  form. 

For  comedy,  in  Shakespeare,  never  aims  merely  or 
primarily  at  the  ludicrous.  It  is  not  broad  or  farcical.  It 
admits  little  mere  buffoonery  and  little  grotesque  incident. 
It  makes  you  smile  inwardly,  but  not  laugh  aloud.  Even 
in  his  very  earliest  plays,  the  effect  of  comedy  is  gained 
not  by  exhibiting  caricature  or  oddity  of  character  or  by 
farcical  incident,  but  rather  by  showing  us  affectations  such 
as  we  all  put  on  occasionally,  sentiments  passing  into  pretty 
forms  of  sentimentality,  the  varying  play  of  moods,  the 
sprightly  sallies  of  wit,  and  the  droll  self-importance  of 
stupidity.  In  these  more  mature  comedies  we  have  a  wider 
experience  and  so  quicker  perception  and  deeper  enjoyment 
of  all  the  humorous  phases  of  life,  while  there  is  still  less 
of  mere  incident  or  eccentricity.  Plays  like  Twelfth  Night 
and  As  You  Like  It  are  not  comedies  of  laughter,  but 
comedies  of  gladness.  They  are  the  poetry  of  health,  of 
cheerfulness,  of  vigor.  They  seem  to  me  the  best  expression 
we  have  in  literature  of  the  full  joyousness  of  living.  They 
awaken  in  us  those  thoughts,  emotions,  and  sentiments,  that 
most   minister   to    a    refined    and    healthful    happiness,    and 


3!£y„87 


38     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

they  portray  in  others  with  charming  humor  but  without 
any  bitterness  those  peculiar  and  humorous  phases  of  char- 
acter that  make  up  so  large  a  part  of  the  innocent  pleasures 
of  observation.  Take,  for  instance,  two  such  characters  as 
Rosalind  and  Jaques  in  the  play  before  us.  What  a  refresh- 
ment in  the  mere  presence  of  Rosalind !  She  is  like  a  spring 
morning;  she  makes  all  life  seem  new  and  gladsome  to  us, 
and  we  hardly  know  how.  And  Jaques, — or  Jac-ques  as 
I  suppose  we  must  call  him  since  Shakespeare  does, — what 
an  immense  deal  of  quiet  enjoyment  one  can  get  out  of  him. 
There  is  nothing  boldly  pronounced  in  the  depiction  of  his 
character,  but  what  a  peculiar  and  subtly  humorous  in- 
dividuality it  is !  Yet  neither  of  these  characters  ministers 
directly  to  our  sense  of  the  ludicrous;  they  'tickle  us  about 
the  heart  root,'  as  Chaucer  says  somewhere,  but  they  do  not 
tempt  us  much  to  laughter. 

In  such  comedy  as  this  love  will  of  course  usually  furnish 
the  motive  upon  which  the  action  turns,  since  without  love 
a  life  of  exquisite  gladness  is  hardly  conceivable.  It  is 
under  the  influence  of  the  gentle  passion  in  some  of  its  mani- 
fold phases  that  all  the  charms  and  graces  of  character 
blossom  out  most  freely.  And  we  must  admit,  too,  that  it 
also  warms  into  humorous  activity  all  the  pleasant  affecta- 
tions and  whimsicalities ;  as  an  old  writer  would  say,  it  doth 
greatly  breed  humors.  Think  what  a  various  company 
of  lovers  we  have  in  these  three  plays, — Rosalind,  bright, 
witty;  Orlando,  modest  yet  poetical;  the  Duke  of  Twelfth 
Night,  sentimental  and  dreamy — in  love  with  being  in  love; 
Viola,  gentle,  tender,  and  wise;  Beatrice,  with  that  tart 
tongue  of  hers  that,  we  are  sure,  made  life  racy  for  Benedick 
the  rest  of  his  days;  Malvolio,  the  inimitable,  who  never  felt 
his  own  worth  till  his  lady  seemed  to  shine  upon  it;  Touch- 
stone, who  is  so  determined  not  to  be  blinded  by  any  illu- 
sions of  beauty  that  he  deliberately  chooses  the  ugliest 
rustic  lass  he  can  find, — this  is  not  half  the  list.  And  in  all 
it  is  love  that  sets  in  motion  whatever  in  them  is  most 
graceful  and  humorous.  The  comedy  must  end  happily: 
but  in  the  course  of  that  true  love  which  we  shall  not  expect 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  39 

always  to  run  smoothly,  there  will  be  abundant  opportunity 
to  show  some  touches  of  that  pathos  of  self-denial  and  quiet 
suffering  which  lends  a  moral  charm  to  our  comedy  and 
proves  its  love  to  be  strong  as  well  as  sweet.  When  we  have 
love  and  all  the  pretty  humors  born  of  love,  we  must  have 
poetry  and  musk;  we  shall  find  in  these  plays  some  of 
Shakespeare's  most  luxuriant  description  and  his  most  de- 
licious imagery,  while  the  songs  scattered  through  them  are 
the  most  dainty  and  tuneful  he  ever  wrote: 

It  was  a  lover  and  his  lass, 

With  a  hey,  and  a  ho,  and  a  hey  nonino, 

That  o'er  the  green  corn-field  did  pass 

In  the  spring  time,  the  only  pretty  ring  time, 

When   birds  do  sing,   hey   ding  a  ding,   ding; 

Sweet  lovers  love  the  spring. 

But  these  comedies  are  not,  like  A  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  an  exercise  in  airy  and  sportive  fancy,  a  revel  in 
all  forms  of  the  beautiful  for  its  own  sake.  Shakespeare 
came  to  their  composition  when  he  was  just  reaching  the 
prime  of  his  early  manhood.  The  experience  of  ten  years 
had  not  been  lost  upon  him.  The  plays  impress  us  at  once 
as  much  wiser  than  his  early  comedies.  There  is  a  pene- 
tration and  thoughtfulness  in  them  that  we  do  not  see  in 
The  Tvco  Gentlemen  of  Verona  or  A  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream.  The  charm  of  the  principal  characters,  like  Rosa- 
lind and  Beatrice,  is  largely  an  intellectual  one.  The  plays 
are  full  of  the  most  pithy  and  sententious  observations.  If 
they  have  not  that  ripeness,  that  almost  over-fulness  of 
meaning  and  of  feeling  that  one  finds  in  the  latest  plays, 
they  clearly  mark  a  period  when  Shakespeare's  intellectual 
powers  were  in  their  prime — he  was  about  thirty-eight,  you 
remember — and  his  life,  not  yet  brought  under  the  shadow 
of  any  great  sorrow  or  any  great  doubt  still  felt  the  buoyant 
joyousness  of  youth. 

Of  the  three  comedies  most  would,  I  think,  select  as 
the  best  either  the  Twelfth  Night  or  the  As  You  Like  It,  but 
as  between  these  two  I  suspect  there  would  be  much  differ- 
ence of  opinion.     One  likes  best  the  one  he  has  read  last;  on 


40     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

which  ground  I  am  now  inclined  to  prefer  the  As  You  Like 
It.  But  whether  the  As  You  Like  It  be  the  best  of  Shakes- 
peare's comedies  or  not,  I  am  quite  sure  that  it  is  the  most 
typical,  the  purest  example  of  that  kind  of  comedy  which 
Shakespeare  preferred.  There  is  certainly  less  variety  in  it 
and  less  contrast  than  in  the  Twelfth  Night.  There  is  no 
loud  mirth  in  it  like  that  of  Aguecheek  and  Sir  Toby,  no 
broadly  ridiculous  affectations  like  those  of  Malvolio,  no 
such  intensity  of  feeling  as  sometimes  seems  to  suffuse  for  a 
moment  the  gracious  talk  of  Viola.  It  seems  as  if  Shake- 
speare would  not  venture  to  disturb  the  romantic  charm  of 
this  play  of  As  You  Like  It  by  admitting  to  it  any  broad 
humor  whatever;  and  while  he  made  it  serious  as  well  as 
gladsome,  he  would  allow  no  strain  of  real  sadness  to  invade 
its  music.  In  As  You  Like  It  everything  is  airy,  refined,  ro 
mantic.  And  I  have  always  thought  in  the  name  he  gave 
it  Shakespeare  meant  to  indicate,  among  other  things,  his 
confidence  that  this  time,  at  least,  we  must  like  his  work. 

We  know  where  he  found  the  plot  of  the  play  so  far  as 
it  has  any  plot.  Among  that  half  score  of  young  fellows 
who  in  the  decade  between  1580  and  1590  managed  to  com- 
bine the  parts  of  scholar,  adventurer,  and  poet  was  one 
Thomas  Lodge.  He  began  as  a  writer  of  rather  over- 
pretty  lyrics,  tried  some  dramas  not  very  successfully,  and 
after  a  wild  and  roving  youth,  gave  up  literature  and  sobered 
himself  into  a  physician.  His  most  fortunate  literary  at- 
tempts were  long  pastoral  romances,  a  kind  of  fiction  then 
much  in  vogue,  of  which  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia  is  the 
best  known  example.  The  rough  and  boisterous  spirits  of 
the  day  seemed  to  delight  in  imaginations  of  a  delicious 
sylvan  country  where  all  impossible  beauties  were  heaped  in 
endless  profusion.  Of  Lodge's  romances  the  best  is  one  he 
wrote  on  shipboard,  while  voyaging  in  the  tropics  for  glory 
and  booty  under  one  Captain  Clarke.  "To  beguile  the 
time  with  labor,"  says  he,  "I  writ  this  book;  rough  as 
hatched  in  the  storms  of  the  ocean  and  feathered  in  the 
surges  of  many  perilous  seas,  .  .  .  when  every  line  was  wet 
with  a  surge,  and  every  humorous  passion  counterchecked 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  41 

with  a  storm."  This  romance  of  Rosalynde,  printed  in 
1590,  is  the  book  in  which  Shakespeare  found  the  whole 
plot  of  As  You  Like  It.  The  forest,  the  banished  duke, 
the  banished  brother,  and  the  banished  maiden  who  mas- 
querades in  male  attire  with  the  faithful  cousin  who  shares 
her  exile,  the  old  servant  Adam,  the  lover  who  carves  his 
verses  on  the  trees, — all  these,  with  other  minor  incidents, 
Shakespeare  found  ready  to  his  hand  in  Lodge's  book.  From 
Lodge's  book,  too,  he  may  have  gained  besides  the  plot  and 
the  names  of  his  personages  some  faint  suggestion  of  that 
exquisite  pastoral  atmosphere  so  delightful  in  his  play; 
but  he  could  hardly  have  got  anything  more  than  that. 
The  characters  of  his  play  are  entirely  of  his  own  creation, 
and  for  three  of  them,  Jaques,  Touchstone,  and  Audrey,  he 
found  no  hint  in  the  romance  of  Lodge,  or  anywhere  else,  so 
far  as  we  know.  And  it  need  hardly  be  said  the  felicities  of 
diction,  the  wealth  of  wisdom,  wit,  and  imagination  in  the 
play  are  entirely  his  own. 

The  central  purpose  in  the  plot  of  the  play  is  to  select 
a  company  of  people  of  characteristics  sufficiently  varied  to 
produce  pleasing  dramatic  contrasts,  and  then  to  place  these 
people  in  such  circumstances  as  shall  remove  at  once  the 
restraints  and  conventions  of  an  artificial  society  and  leave 
each  one  free  to  follow  the  impulses  of  his  nature.  These 
lords  and  ladies  are  placed  in  the  sunny  glades  of  the  forest 
of  Arden  and  left  to  do  as  they  like.  The  object  of  the 
poet  is  not,  primarily,  to  contrast  the  artificial  life  of  courts 
with  the  natural  life  of  the  country, — it  isn't  a  pretty  ob- 
ject-lesson in  Rousseau, — for  the  banished  duke,  and  Or- 
lando, and  the  ladies  all  carry  with  them  into  the  forest 
characters  that  have  been  formed  under  the  pressure  of 
active  life  and  have  known  care  and  sorrow.  Still  less  did 
Shakespeare  have  any  purpose  to  show  that  ministry  of 
nature  to  uplift  and  purify  human  thought  of  which  in  more 
recent  poetry  we  have,  perhaps,  heard  quite  enough, — that 
is  a  modern  Wordsworthian  notion.  No,  Shakespeare's 
purpose  was  simply  to  give  us  a  picture  of  life  in  such  idyllic 
surroundings  as  we  all  dream  of,  but  never  find.     It  would 


42     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

be  something,  we  often  think,  to  be  well  out  of  Mrs. 
Grundy's  neighborhood,  to  begin  with.  It  is  much  more  to 
be  released  from  the  constant  stress  and  urgency,  to  be  out 
of  the  care  and  fret,  the  dull  routine  that  makes  life  not 
only  toilsome  but  prosaic.  We  never  quite  get  rid  of  a 
primitive  sylvan  impulse :  it  is  this  that  makes  pastoral 
and  idyllic  poetry  always;  it  is  some  vague  and  groping 
form  of  this  desire  that  will  lead  half  of  us  in  the  next  two 
months  to  abandon  the  comforts  of  civilization  and  brave 
the  terrors  of  country  board,  or  lead  some — wiser  and  more 
fortunate — into  the  solitudes  of  the  Maine  woods  or  the 
Adirondacks.  Yet  we  do  not  really  wish  to  forego  the  graces 
of  intellect  and  manners.  If  we  think  we  can  surrender  some 
of  the  comforts,  we  cannot  give  up  the  amenities  of  life. 
Our  ideal  pastoral  country  must  not  lie  in  the  land  of  the 
Philistines.  The  wit  and  wisdom,  the  brilliant  converse, 
the  beauty  and  graces,  of  society,  along  with  the  freedom, 
the  freshness,  and  joyance  of  nature, — where  shall  we  find 
that  combination?  Where?  Why  in  the  Forest  of  Arden. 
In  these  cool  woodland  spaces,  where  the  interlacing  shad- 
ows dance  upon  the  dewy  ground,  and  the  deer  come  down 
to  the  brawling  brooks  to  drink,  here  is  a  little  company 
of  people  who  have  brought  hither  all  the  urbanity  that 
courts  can  teach  and  all  the  sober  thoughtfulness  tfhat 
long  and  varied  experience  can  give,  but  who  find  here  the 
burden  of  convention  and  artificiality  lifted  off  at  once,  so 
that  all  natural  impulses  can  blossom  out  without  restraint, 
and  they  can  "fleet  the  time  carelessly  as  they  did  in  the 
golden  world."  When  you  and  I  try  to  picture  life  as  we 
should  like  it,  doesn't  the  forest  of  Arden  come  oftenest  to- 
our  thought? 

Under  the  greenwood  tree 
Who  loves  to  lie  with  me, 
And  tune  his  merry  note 
Unto  the  sweet  bird's  throat, 
Come  hither,  come  hither,  come  hither ! 
Here  shall  he  see 
No  enemy 
But  winter  and  rough  weather. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  43 

There's  not  much  action  in  the  play — as,  indeed,  why  should 
there  be?  There  is  nothing  to  be  done  in  the  forest  of 
Arden.  That  is  the  charm  of  it ;  here  feel  we  not  the  penalty 
of  Adam.  Yet  there  is  no  monotony  or  dull  inaction,  for 
the  play  sparkles  with  wit  and  life  from  beginning  to  end. 
The  interest,  therefore,  arises  mostly  from  what  is  said,  and 
from  a  kind  of  sprightly  and  gladsome  feeling  that  seems  to 
pervade  the  play,  without  coming  into  expression  much  more 
prominently  at  any  one  point  than  another. 

The  first  act  serves  for  little  more  than  to  get  Orlando 
and  Rosalind  in  love  with  each  other,  and  to  get  all  the 
people  fairly  started  for  the  forest.  At  the  opening  of  the 
play,  you  remember,  the  usurping  Duke,  Frederick,  has  al- 
ready driven  his  elder  brother,  the  real  Duke,  into  exile. 
Rosalind,  the  daughter  of  this  banished  Duke,  however, 
still  remains  with  her  cousin  Celia  at  the  court  of  her  usurp- 
ing uncle,  until  Frederick,  getting  to  dislike  her  as  a  con- 
stant reminder  of  his  injustice  to  her  father,  commands  her 
also  to  leave  the  court,  and  she  goes,  with  her  cousin  Celia 
and  the  court  fool,  Touchstone,  to  the  forest  of  Arden, 
whither  her  father  has  preceded  her.  The  other  bad  man  of 
the  play,  Oliver,  is  of  the  same  unfraternal  temper,  with- 
holds from  his  younger  brother,  Orlando,  the  share  of  the 
paternal  estate  due  him,  treats  him  with  studied  rudeness, 
and  soon  manages  to  inveigle  him  into  a  match  with  Duke 
Frederick's  wrestler,  which  he  thinks  will  be  the  death  of 
him.  But  Orlando  throws  the  vaunting  wrestler,  at  the 
same  time  catching  the  fancy  of  Rosalind,  who  is  looking  on. 
And  a  little  later,  learning  that  his  brother  is  plotting 
against  him,  he,  too,  with  the  trusty  servant,  Adam,  goes 
out  to  complete  the  company  of  exiles  in  the  forest  of 
Arden.  Shakespeare  is  not  careful  to  portray  very  clearly 
the  characters  of  these  two  men  who  are  so  hard-hearted 
toward  their  brothers,  because  he  wishes  to  concentrate  our 
attention  upon  the  group  in  the  forest.  He  is,  however, 
concerned  to  give  us  at  least  a  glimpse  of  the  real  character 
of  Oliver,  since  he  is  to  introduce  him  again,  in  the  last  part 
of  the  play,  you  remember,  as  the  lover  of  Celia.      We  are 


44     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

made  to  see,  therefore,  just  what  is  the  motive  of  Oliver's 
hatred  for  Orlando.  Oliver  is  naturally  haughty,  reserved, 
and  so  unpopular.  Nobody  likes  him,  and  nobody  gives 
him  credit  even  for  what  good  there  is  in  him.  And  so,  as 
often  happens  with  such  men,  his  unpopularity  changes  his 
reserve  into  moroseness  and  suspicion.  His  brother,  Or- 
lando, on  the  contrary,  is  open,  affable,  and  sunny- 
tempered,  wins  golden  opinions  from  all  sorts  of 
people.  It  is  almost  inevitable  that  Oliver  should  envy 
Orlando,  and  natural  that  he  should  envy  him  all  the  more 
because  Orlando  accepts  his  envy  with  quiet  indifference 
which  seems  to  imply  a  conscious  superiority.  Oliver  lets 
out  the  real  cause  of  his  hatred  in  a  bit  of  soliloquy,  after 
he  has  been  plotting  with  the  wrestler  to  get  rid  of  his 
brother: 

I  hope  I  shall  see  an  end  of  him;  for  my  soul,  yet  I  know  not 
why,  hates  nothing  more  than  he.  Yet  he's  gentle;  never  school'd, 
and  yet  learned ;  full  of  noble  device ;  of  all  sorts  enchantingly 
beloved;  and  indeed  so  much  in  the  heart  of  the  world,  and  espe- 
cially of  my  own  people,  who  best  know  him,  that  I  am  altogether 
misprised. 

Envy  like  this  will  never  be  broken  by  resentment  or  in- 
difference, but  you  will  observe  what  a  fine  touch  of  truth 
and  nature  it  is  that  this  brother  when,  in  the  last  act,  he  is 
given  a  sudden  and  overwhelming  proof  of  the  wronged 
Orlando's  forgiving  temper  should  melt  down  at  once,  and 
take  his  brother  to  his  heart.  Still  more  true  is  the  poetic 
judgment  that  makes  this  mistrustful  and  jealous-tempered 
man,  when  first  in  his  life  he  feels  the  power  of  one  gen- 
erous love,  open  his  heart  to  another,  and  find  a  fascination 
in  the  straightforward,  practical  Celia. 

Dr.  Johnson,  in  his  few  words  of  comment  on  this  play, 
says  with  a  rather  ponderous  attempt  at  archness  of  man- 
ner, "I  know  not  how  the  ladies  will  approve  the  facility 
with  which  Rosalind  and  Celia  give  away  their  hearts." 
Shakespeare  by  his  practice  in  many  of  his  plays  manifestly 
leans  towards  the  opinion  he  makes  Phoebe  quote  from 
Marlowe, 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  45 

Who  ever  loved,  that  loved  not  at  first  sight? 

Divers  philosophers,  I  believe,  have  held  the  same  view, — 
as  for  instance  Coleridge,  who,  however,  never  did  love. 
But  some  things  can  be  said  in  explanation  of  Rosalind's 
precipitancy.  Not  only  is  Orlando  as  proper  a  young  man 
as  you  will  find  on  a  summer's  day,  modest,  open,  and  noble, 
but  his  situation  when  first  Rosalind  sees  him  is  such  as  to 
appeal  strongly  to  her  sympathy, — a  manly  and  winning 
young  fellow,  without  funds,  about  to  be  knocked  in  the 
head  by  a  prize-fighter.  Her  own  misfortunes  give  her  a 
sudden  sense  of  kinship  with  him.  But  I  take  it  that  nothing 
will  change  pity  into  that  love  to  which  it  is  said  to  be 
akin  so  quickly  as  the  conviction  that  as  pity  it  is  no  longer 
called  for.  When  the  young  Orlando  sets  the  broken  music 
in  the  sides  of  the  bonny  priser  of  the  Duke  and  proves 
himself  as  stout  as  he  is  gentle,  we  see  that  Rosalind  is  won. 
The  matter  of  fact  Celia  steps  forward  at  once  to  con- 
gratulate him: 

Sir,  you  have  well  deserv'd. 
If  you  do  keep  your  promises  in  love 
But  justly,  as  you  have  exceeded  all  promise, 
Your  mistress  shall  be  happy. 

Ros.  Gentleman, 

[Giving  him  a  chain  from  her  neck.] 
Wear  this  for  me,  one  out  of  suits  with  fortune, 
That  could  give  more,  but  that  her  hand  lacks  means. 
Shall  we  go,  coz? 

Cel.  Ay.    Fare  you  well,  fair  gentleman. 

But  you  will  notice  that  it  is  Rosalind  that  turns  back  for  a 
last  word.  Orlando,  as  they  go  out,  rebukes  himself  for 
his  awkward  bashfulness: 

Can  I  not  say,  I  thank  you?     My  better  parts 
Are  all  thrown  down,  and  that  which  here  stands  up 
Is  but  a  quintain,  a  mere  lifeless  block. 

He  is  speaking  to  himself.  Rosalind  knows  it,  but  glad  of 
any  pretext  to  turn  back  an  instant,  she  says  with  a  bluth : 


46     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

He  calls  us  back.     My  pride  fell  with  my  fortunes; 
I'll  ask  him  what  he  would.     Did  you  call,  sir? 
Sir,  you  have  wrestled  well,  and  overthrown 
More  than  your  enemies. 

Cel.  Will  you  go,  coz? 

Ros.     Have  with  you.    Fare  you  well. 

That  moment's  hesitation  between  her  modesty  and  the 
frank  impulse  of  admiration  is  a  revelation.  Shakespeare 
would  give  us  a  glimpse  into  the  true  woman's  heart  of 
Rosalind  which  we  shall  not  forget.  In  the  forest  of 
Arden  we  are  to  see  her  in  doublet  and  hose,  with  a  wit  as 
nimble  as  Atalanta's  heels,  but  we  are  to  understand  at  the 
outset  that  her  character  is  not  at  bottom  frivolous  or  flip- 
pant, but  sound,  serious,  and  womanly.  She  is  too  healthy 
for  moodiness  or  melancholy,  but  the  bits  of  dialogue  in  the 
First  Act,  show  us  that,  though  she  bears  it  cheerfully,  she 
still  feels  the  heavy  lot  that  has  left  her  almost  friendless 
on  the  bounty  of  the  man  who  has  banished  her  father. 
In  the  pretty  bit  of  confidence  with  Celia  just  before  she 
is  exiled,  her  bright  humor  is  mixed  with  some  sense  of 
weariness  and  anxiety  like  April  sunshine  and  cloud: 

Cel.  Why,  cousin!  why,  Rosalind!  Cupid  have  mercy!  not  a 
word? 

Ros.    Not  one  to  throw  at  a  dog. 

Cel.  No,  thy  words  are  too  precious  to  be  cast  away  upon  curs ; 
throw  some  of  them  at  me.    Come,  lame  me  with  reasons. 

Ros.  Then  there  were  two  cousins  laid  up,  when  the  one 
should  be  lam'd  with  reasons  and  the  other  mad  without  any. 

Cel.    But  is  all  this  for  your  father? 

Ros.  No,  some  of  it  is  for  my  child's  father.  O,  how  full  of 
briers  is  this  working-day  world ! 

Cel.  They  are  but  burs,  cousin,  thrown  upon  thee  in  holiday 
foolery.  If  we  walk  not  in  the  trodden  paths,  our  very  petticoats 
will  catch  them. 

Ros.  I  could  shake  them  off  my  coat.  These  burs  are  in  my 
heart. 

Cel.    Hem  them  away. 

Ros.    I  would  try,  if  I  could  hem  and  have  him. 

Cel.     Come,  come,  wrestle  with  thy  affections. 

Ros.     O,  they  take  the  part  of  a  better  wrestler  than  myself! 

Cel.     .  .  .  But,  turning  these  jests  out  of  service,  let  us  talk  in 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  47 

good  earnest.  Is  it  possible,  on  such  a  sudden  you  should  fall  into 
so  strong  a  liking  with  old  Sir  Roland's  youngest  son? 

Ros.     The  Duke  my  father  lov'd  his  father  dearly. 

Cel.  Doth  it  therefore  ensue  that  you  should  love  his  son 
dearly?  By  this  kind  of  chase,  I  should  hate  him,  for  my  father 
hated  his  father  dearly;  yet  I  hate  not  Orlando. 

Ros.     No,  faith,  hate  him  not,  for  my  sake. 

And  you  will  remember  what  the  usurping  Duke  says  of  her 
to  Celia  when  he  is  trying  to  excuse  his  own  harshness: 

She  is  too  subtle  for  thee;  and  her  smoothness, 
Her  very  silence,  and  her  patience 
Speak  to  the  people,  and  they  pity  her. 

When  we  meet  her  in  the  forest  masquerading  like  a  pert 
and  saucy  lacquey,  and  playing  the  knave  with  Orlando,  we 
shall  know  that  in  truth  she  has  no  doublet  and  hose  in  her 
disposition. 

But  it  is  time  that  we  should  go  to  the  forest.     The 
banished  Duke  is  the  first  person  we  meet  there: 

Now,  my  co-mates  and  brothers  in  exile, 
Hath  not  old  custom  made  this  life  more  sweet 
Than  that  of  painted  pomp?     Are  not  these  woods 
More  free  from  peril  than  the  envious  court? 
Here  feel  we  not  the  penalty  of  Adam, 
The  seasons'  difference,  as  the  icy  fang 
And  churlish  chiding  of  the  winter's  wind, 
Which,  when  it  bites  and  blows  upon  my  body, 
Even  till  I  shrink  with  cold,  I  smile  and  say, 
"This  is  no  flattery:  these  are  counsellors 
That  feelingly  persuade  me  what  I  am." 
Sweet  are  the  uses  of  adversity, 
Which,  like  the  toad,  ugly  and  venomous, 
Wears  yet  a  precious  jewel  in  his  head ; 
And  this  our  life,  exempt  from  public  haunt, 
Finds  tongues  in  trees,  books  in  the  running  brooks, 
Sermons  in  stones,  and  good  in  every  thing. 

Of  this  good  Duke  we  see  but  little,  these  lines  being  nearly 
half  of  all  he  utters  during  the  play,  yet  we  feel  we  know 
him  very  well.    This  man  has  tried  life  in  all  its  phases,  and 


48     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

found  it  all  a  discipline  of  virtue.  It  is  because  he  has 
schooled  his  soul  to  faith  and  charity,  has 

with  holy  bell  been  knoll'd  to  church, 
And  sat  at  good  men's  feasts,  and  wip'd   [his]  eyes 
Of  drops  that  sacred  pity  hath  engend'red, 

that  he  can  find  the  woodland  life  so  calm  and  so  full  of 
food  for  kindly  thoughts.  Though  deposed  and  banished 
there  is  nothing  sour  or  gloomy  in  his  temper,  and  glimpses 
of  genial  humor  and  poetry  of  spirit  remind  us  that  he  is 
the  father  of  Rosalind.  "I  met  the  Duke  yesterday," 
says  Rosalind,  who  has  not  yet  discovered  herself  to  her 
father.  "I  met  the  Duke  and  had  much  question  with  him. 
He  asked  me  of  what  parentage  I  was.  I  told  him, 
of  as  good  as  he;  so  he  laugh'd  and  let  me  go."  And 
I  think  it  is  pleasant  that  his  most  constant  companion 
is  the  light-tempered  Amiens  who  sings  the  charming 
songs. 

But  by  far  the  most  interesting  person  in  the  Duke's  little 
company  is  Jaques.  What  an  original,  juicy  character  he 
is !  A  man  whom  it  is  rather  hard  to  analyze — real  men 
usually  are — but  who  always  piques  your  curiosity  and  whom 
you  remember  like  an  old  acquaintance.  Jaques,  I  take  it, 
is  a  curious  compound  of  a  cynic  and  a  sentimentalist.  He 
is  old, — "the  old  gentleman,"  says  Phebe, — and  the  Duke 
says  he  has  been  too  free  a  liver.  But  the  Duke  is  always 
a  little  hard  upon  him,  and  we  need  not  conclude  that  Jaques 
had  sunk  himself  in  any  very  debasing  vices.  But  he  has  led 
an  aimless  life  of  adventure,  seeking  pleasure  in  all  forms; 
and  he  has  found,  of  course,  that  pleasure  sought  for  too 
eagerly  soon  palls.  Unlike  all  the  rest  of  the  company  he 
has  never  known  any  central  purpose  or  made  life  a  serious 
thing;  and  so  unlike  all  the  rest  he  finds  no  exhilaration  in 
this  free  woodland  leisure.  He  has  traveled  from  Dan  to 
Beersheba  and  found  it  all  barren.  Jaques  is  blase.  "It  is 
a  melancholy  of  mine  own,  compounded  of  many  simples 
.  .  .  ;  and  indeed  the  sundry  contemplation  of  my  travels,  in 
which  my  often  rumination  wraps  me  in  a  most  humorous 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  49 

sadness."  Having  now  got  beyond  the  relish  of  most  pleas- 
ures himself,  he  finds  a  perverse  comfort  in  exposing  the 
vanity  of  pleasure  in  others.  Yet  there  is  no  moral  sound- 
ness in  his  rebukes;  nothing  but  the  languid  satiety  of  the 
man  who  assures  you  with  superiority  that  he  has  been 
through  all  that.  To  preach  vanitas  vatiitatum  never  con- 
verted anybody  yet,  I  suppose;  and  most  such  preachers  have 
a  kind  of  lingering  fondness  for  the  experiences  they  exhort 
you  to  avoid,  and  take  a  seductive  pleasure  in  the  melancholy 
retrospect.  That  was  tha  case  with  Jaques:  and  that 
was  the  reason  why  the  sound-hearted  Duke,  as  you  remem- 
ber, thinks  he  had  better  not  set  up  for  a  reformer: 

Duke.     Fie  on  thee!     I  can  tell  what  thou  wouldst  do. 
Jaq.     What,  for  a  counter,  would  I  do,  but  good? 
Duke.     Most  mischievous  foul  sin,  in  chiding  sin. 

But  though  Jaques  is  something  of  a  cynic,  he  is  more  of 
a  sentimentalist.  Your  healthy  man  puts  his  sentiments  at 
once  into  practice  without  stopping  to  think  about  them; 
emotions  with  him  are  motives  as  they  ought  to  be;  but 
your  sentimentalist  collects  beautiful  sentiments  like  a  con- 
noisseur to  gloat  over  them  and  invites  his  emotions  merely 
for  the  luxury  of  feeling  them.  And  this  seems  to  me  exactly 
the  case  with  Jaques.  He  loves  to  titillate  his  sensibilities, 
and  to  taste  the  delicacy  of  a  new  emotion.  You  remember 
the  graceful  pathos  of  one  of  his  moody  reveries  : 

as  he  lay  along 
Under  an  oak  whose  antique  root  peeps  out 
Upon  the  brook  that  brawls  along  this  wood ; 
To  the  which  place  a  poor  sequest'red  stag, 
That  from  the  hunter's  aim  had  ta'en  a  hurt, 
Did  come  to  languish  ;  and,  indeed,  my  lord, 
The  wretched  animal  heav'd  forth  such  groans, 
That  their  discharge  did  stretch  his  leathern  coat 
Almost  to  bursting,  and  the  big  round  tears 
Cours'd  one  another  down  his  innocent  nose 
In  piteous  chase;  and  thus  the  hairy  fool, 
Much  marked  of  the  melancholy  Jaques, 


50     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Stood  on  the  extremest  verge  of  the  swift  b^ook, 
Augmenting  it  with  tears. 

Duke  S.  But  what  said  Jaques? 

Did  he  not  moralize  this  spectacle? 

ist  Lord.    O,  yes,  into  a  thousand  similes, 

weeping  and  commenting  on  the  sobbing  deer.  But  his 
appetite  has  become  so  jaded  that  it  takes  something  of 
piquant  flavor  to  stir  it.  Sound  healthy  men  bore  him.  That 
accounts  for  his  aversion  to  the  Duke.  The  Duke  "hath 
been  all  this  day  to  look  you,"  says  Amiens;  whereupon 
Jaques,  "And  I  have  been  all  this  day  to  avoid  him.  He  is 
too  disputable  for  my  company.  I  think  of  as  many  matters 
as  he ;  but  I  give  heaven  thanks,  and  make  no  boast  of  them." 
For  Orlando  he  has  a  kind  of  humorous  pity,  since  Orlando 
is  "green  and  happy  in  first  love,  and  thankful  for  illusion." 
Once  only  he  finds  a  specimen  that  is  a  genuine  novelty  in 
human  nature.  After  he  has  met  Touchstone,  he  enters 
fairly  quivering  with  delight: 

A  fool,  a  fool!    I  met  a  fool  i'  the  forest, 

A  motley  fool.    A  miserable  world! 

As  I  do  live  by  food,  I  met  a  fool; 

Who  laid  him  down  and  bask'd  him  in  the  sun, 

And  rail'd  on  Lady  Fortune  in  good  terms, 

In  good  set  terms,  and  yet  a  motley  fool. 

"Good  morrow,  fool,"  quoth  I.    "No,  sir,"  quoth  he, 

"Call  me  not  fool  till  heaven  hath  sent  me  fortune." 

And  then  he  drew  a  dial  from  his  poke, 

And,  looking  on  it  with  lack-lustre  eye, 

Says  very  wisely,  "It  is  ten  o'clock. 

Thus  we  may  see,"  quoth  he,  "how  the  world  wags. 

'Tis  but  an  hour  ago  since  it  was  nine ; 

And  after  one  hour  more  't  will  be  eleven ; 

And  so,  from  hour  to  hour,  we  ripe  and  ripe, 

And  then,  from  hour  to  hour,  we  rot  and  rot ; 

And  thereby  hangs  a  tale."    When  I  did  hear 

The  motley  fool  thus  moral  on  the  time, 

My  lungs  began  to  crow  like  chanticleer, 

That  fools  should  be  so  deep-contemplative; 

And  I  did  laugh  sans  intermission 

An  hour  by  this  dial.     O  noble  fool! 

A  worthy  fool !    Motley's  the  only  wear. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  51 

Duke  S.    What  fool  is  this? 

Jaq.     O  worthy  fool!     One  that  hath  been  a  courtier, 
And  says,  if  ladies  be  but  young  and  fair, 
They  have  the  gift  to  know  it;  and  in  his  brain, 
Which  is  as  dry  as  the  remainder  biscuit 
After  a  voyage,  he  hath  strange  places  cramm'd 
With  observation,  the  which  he  vents 
In  mangled  forms.     O  that  I  were  a  fool! 
I  am  ambitious  for  a  motley  coat. 

Such  a  man  as  Jaques  makes  a  poor  friend,  for  your 
thorough-going  sentimentalist  is  the  most  selfish  of  mortals, 
— he  couldn't  afford  to  keep  so  many  beautiful  sentiments  if 
he  felt  obliged  to  act  upon  them.  But  though  a  poor  friend, 
he  may  make  a  very  agreeable  companion.  Jaques  cer- 
tainly is.  His  melancholy  casts  no  gloom  on  any  one,  for 
it  is  evident  that  it  is  only  a  humorous  sadness  which  he  him- 
self vastly  enjoys.  He  has  naturally  exquisite  tastes,  and 
he  has  never  done  anything  but  cultivate  them.  He  loves 
music,  though  he  "can  suck  melancholy  out  of  a  song,  as  a 
weasle  sucks  eggs,"  and,  when  he  is  in  his  moods,  there  is  a 
vein  of  quaint  humor  in  him  infinitely  diverting.  As  the 
Duke  says,  he  is  "very  full  of  matter."  When  the  play 
closes  he  drifts  away  to  seek  the  last  bit  of  curious  psychol- 
ogy he  has  heard  of, — the  wicked  Duke  that  has  suddenly 
got  converted: 

Jaq.     Sir,  by  your  patience.     If  I  heard  you  rightly, 
The  Duke  hath  put  on  a  religious  life 
And  thrown  into  neglect  the  pompous  court? 

Jaq.  de  B.     He  hath. 

Jaq.     To  him  will  I.     Out  of  these  convertites 
There  is  much  matter  to  be  heard  and  learn'd. 

He  is  Shakespeare's  picture  of  the  man  who  thinks  the  whole 
great  struggle  of  human  life  goes  on  in  order  that  he  may 
make  a  variety  of  interesting  observations  upon  it,  and 
remark  that 

all    the   world's   a   stage, 
And  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players. 


52     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

He  is  very  interesting,  but  I  think  Shakespeare's  verdict 
upon  him,  and  that  of  most  healthy  people,  is  Rosalind's: 
Yes,  you  have  gained  your  experience, — 

And  your  experience  makes  you  sad.  I  had  rather  have  a  fool 
to  make  me  merry  than  experience  to  make  me  sad;  and  to  travel 
for  it  too! 

In  the  As  You  Like  It  we  certainly  do  have  a  delight- 
ful fool  to  make  us  merry.  It  is  a  pity  that  we  have  no 
better  name  than  Fool  to  give  to  Shakespeare's  professed 
jesters,  for  some  of  them  are  among  the  wisest  of  his  per- 
sonages, and  one — the  Fool  in  Lear,  that  most  true  and 
tender-hearted  man  whose  laughter  has  always  in  it  the 
ripple  of  tears — is  surely  one  of  the  most  profound  and 
most  pathetic  characters  Shakespeare  ever  drew.  After  him, 
I  think  the  Touchstone  of  our  play  stands  next.  Wit, 
whimsicality,  a  disposition  to  trip  up  the  heels  of  your 
speech  on  all  occasions,  love  of  song,  quaint  fancy,  a  kind  of 
chartered  impudence,  and,  through  it  all,  glimpses  of  gentle- 
ness that  make  you  love  the  fellow  after  all.  He  is  kind,  for 
among  the  first  words  we  hear  him  speak  are  words  of  pity 
for  the  poor  fellow  whose  ribs  the  wrestler  has  just  broken ; 
he  is  of  strong  affections,  for  Celia  says  he  will  go  along  over 
the  wide  world  with  her.  He  has  a  grave  philosophic  tone 
which  gives  to  the  commonplace  that  air  of  droll  solemnity 
that  pleased  Jaques  so  much,  but  underneath  his  droll  wag- 
gery there  is  a  deal  of  hard  sense.  He  has  kept  his  eyes 
open,  and,  as  Jaques  says,  in  his  brain  there  are  strange 
places  crammed  with  observation.  Naturally  he  is  a  very 
open  and  unworldly  fellow,  only  he  has  so  accustomed  him- 
self to  find  out  the  whimsical  side  of  everything  that  now  he 
doesn't  care  much  for  any  other.  Sidney  Smith  once  said  that 
the  difference  between  a  Scotchman  and  other  men  is  that 
the  Scotchman  always  says  what  is  undermost  in  his  mind, 
and  I  think  something  like  that  is  true  of  Touchstone.  No 
one  of  the  exiles,  you  see,  finds  the  woodland  life  so  novel  as 
this  fool  whose  life  has  been  spent  in  making  jests  for  a 
court.    It  has,  indeed,  a  good  many  inconveniences,  and  he 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  53 

isn't  quite  sure  whether,  on  the  whole,  he  likes  it, — but  it  is 
very  new : 

Cor.  And  how  like  you  this  shepherd's  life,  Master  Touch- 
stone ? 

Touch.  Truly,  shepherd,  in  respect  of  itself,  it  is  a  good  life; 
but  in  respect  that  it  is  a  shepherd's  life,  it  is  naught.  In  respect 
that  it  is  solitary,  I  like  it  very  well;  but  in  respect  that  it  is  private, 
it  is  a  very  vile  life.  Now,  in  respect  it  is  in  the  fields,  it 
pleaseth  me  well ;  but  in  respect  it  is  not  in  the  court,  it  is  tedious. 
As  it  is  a  spare  life,  look  you,  it  fits  my  humour  well;  but  as  there 
is  no  more  plenty  in  it,  it  goes  much  against  my  stomach.  Hast 
any  philosophy  in  thee,  shepherd? 

But  this  strange  life  does  seem  to  put  new  sap  and  green- 
ness into  him,  and  to  force  into  bloom  all  the  poetry  and 
humor  of  his  nature.  Here  in  Arden  he  is  no  more  a  fool 
than  all  the  rest.  And  as  this  love-making  that  is  going  on 
all  about  him  seems  to  be  a  charming  form  of  diversion,  he 
catches  the  mania  too.  The  wooing  of  Touchstone  and  Au- 
drey is  almost  as  delightful  in  its  way  as  that  of  Orlando 
and  Rosalind,  and  of  course  the  one  pair  of  lovers  is  set  over 
against  the  other  in  humorous  contrast.  Touchstone,  I  take 
it,  begins  his  wooing  out  of  pure  whimsicality,  because  Au- 
drey seems  to  him  like  a  constant  joke.  For  you  will  note 
that  Touchstone  is  the  only  one  of  the  exiles  who  takes  any 
real  interest  in  the  rustics  that  are  native  to  the  forest;  the 
world  of  lords  and  ladies  he  knows  well  enough,  but  he  has 
never  seen  anything  like  these  people  before,  and  he  finds 
them  vastly  diverting.  It  seems  that  Touchstone,  following 
the  example  of  his  betters,  had  sent  some  love  rhymes,  which 
he  calls  as  they  were  sometimes  then  called  a  feature,  but 
which  Audrey,  probably  for  lack  of  letters,  did  but  poorly 
appreciate : — 

Touch.  Come  apace,  good  Audrey.  I  will  fetch  up  your 
goats,  Audrey.  And  how,  Audrey,  am  I  the  man  yet?  Doth  my 
simple  feature  content  you? 

Aud.     Your  features!     Lord  warrant  us!  what  features? 

Touch.  I  am  here  with  thee  and  thy  goats,  as  the  most  capri- 
cious poet,  honest  Ovid,  was  among  the  Goths. 


54     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Jaq.  (Aside)  O  knowledge  ill-inhabited,  worse  than  Jove  in 
a  thatch'd  house! 

Touch.  When  a  man's  verses  cannot  be  understood,  nor  a 
man's  good  wit  seconded  with  the  forward  child,  understanding,  it 
strikes  a  man  more  dead  than  a  great  reckoning  in  a  little  room. 
Truly,  I  would  the  gods  had  made  thee  poetical. 

Aud.  I  do  not  know  what  "poetical"  is.  Is  it  honest  in  deed 
and  word?    Is  it  a  true  thing? 

Touch.  No,  truly;  for  the  truest  poetry  is  the  most  feigning; 
and  lovers  are  given  to  poetry,  and  what  they  swear  in  poetry  may 
be  said  as  lovers  they  do  feign. 

Aud.     Do  you  wish  then  that  the  gods  had  made  me  poetical? 

Touch.  I  do,  truly ;  for  thou  swearest  to  me  thou  art  honest. 
Now,  if  thou  wert  a  poet,  I  might  have  some  hope  thou  didst  feign. 

Aud.  Well,  I  am  not  fair;  and  therefore  I  pray  the  gods  make 
me  honest. 

Touch.  Truly,  and  to  cast  away  honesty  upon  a  foul  slut 
were  to  put  good  meat  into  an  unclean  dish. 

Aud.    I  am  not  a  slut,  though  I  thank  the  gods  I  am  foul. 

Touch.  Well,  praised  be  the  gods  for  thy  foulness!  Sluttish- 
ness  may  come  hereafter.     But  be  it  as  it  may  be,  I  will  marry  thee. 

But  we  are  not  to  think  Touchstone's  courtship  a  mere 
piece  of  waggery  throughout.  He  falls  some  way  into  love 
before  he  is  through  with  it.  He  has  to  dispose  of  a  rival, 
and  that  stimulates  his  liking  considerably,  I  suppose;  and 
then  Audrey  plainly  develops  new  charms  of  character  if  not 
of  person.  She  is  proud  of  her  suitor  and  determined  not  to 
lose  him: 

Touch.  To-morrow  is  the  joyful  day,  Audrey ;  to-morrow 
will  we  be  married. 

Aud.  I  do  wish  it  with  all  my  heart;  and  I  hope  it  is  no  dis- 
honest desire  to  desire  to  be  a  woman  of  the  world. 

Touchstone  will  be  obeyed  and  will  be  flattered;  that  is 
evident,  and  I  believe  these  are  sometimes  said  to  be  the  first 
conditions  of  happiness  in  the  married  life.  "What  a  man 
mostly  wants  of  a  wife,"  says  Mrs.  Poyser,  "is  to  make  sure 
of  one  fool  as'll  tell  him  he's  wise."  And  then  we  do  not  for- 
get the  vein  of  real  Honesty  and  goodness  underneath  Touch- 
stone's quiet  exterior;  so  that  at  the  end  I  think  our  wedding 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  55 

congratulations  may  be  extended  to  Touchstone  and  Audrey 
about  as  safely  as  to  either  of  the  other  happy  couples. 

But  after  all,  the  interest  of  the  comedy  centers  about 
Rosalind, — "high-hearted  Rosalind,  kindling  with  sunshine 
the  dusk  greenwood."  It  is  manifestly  not  necessary  or  de- 
sirable that  we  should  all  of  us  like  the  same  woman  in 
Shakespeare,  any  more  than  out  of  Shakespeare.  For  my 
own  part,  if  I  had  to  choose  among  them  all,  I  should  say 
without  hesitation,  that  the  woman  in  Shakespeare  most  al- 
together lovely  is  Imogen,  who  combines  sweetness,  strength, 
and  wisdom  as  no  other.  But  if  the  question  be  which  one  of 
Shakespeare's  maiden  heroines  is  most  engaging,  I  fancy 
most  readers  would  be  likely  to  say  Rosalind.  Which  one  of 
the  whole  noble  company  would  you  so  much  like  to  meet? 
Ophelia  is  lovely,  but  weak;  Cordelia  we  should  reverence 
as  a  thing  enskyed  and  sainted;  Isabella  is  high  and  severe; 
Portia  is  just  a  grain  too  wise;  Juliet  one  cannot  think  of 
save  as  a  lover;  Miranda  and  Perdita  are  indeed  two  charm- 
ing young  maids,  but  as  yet  they  are  only  in  the  bud  of 
womanhood;  Jessica  is  too  volatile  and  girlish;  Beatrice,  I 
for  one  should  be  a  little  afraid  of;  Viola — ah  there  is  in- 
deed no  one,  perhaps,  more  winning  than  she,  and  she  has  a 
vein  of  pensive  poetry  that  I  do  not  find  in  Rosalind,  but  her 
timid  grace  would  shrink  from  casual  acquaintance :  I  believe 
after  all  it  would  be  Rosalind.  Orlando  is  certainly  one  of 
the  luckiest  young  fellows  in  Shakespeare. 

And  yet  it  is  not  the  predominance  of  any  particular  qual- 
ity that  makes  Rosalind  so  attractive  but  the  harmony  of  so 
many  in  a  healthy,  well-balanced  nature.  For  the  first  im- 
pression Rosalind  makes  upon  one  is  that  of  perfect  health, 
physical  and  mental.  And  she  has  that  kind  of  health  which 
is  actually  contagious;  it's  an  inspiration  to  be  in  her  com- 
pany.     She  always  makes  me  think  of  Shelley's  line, 

With  thy  clear,  keen  joyance 
Languor  cannot  be. 

Nothing  can  break  the  elasticity  of  her  temper.      Even  in 
moments  of  weariness  and  depression  her  humor  bubbles  up 


S6     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

in  some  playful  jest.  "O  Jupiter,  how  weary  are  my  spirits  !" 
she  cries  as  at  last  she  reaches  the  forest,  in  her  disguise, 
just  in  time  to  see  Celia  sink  down  exhausted  at  her  feet. 

I  could  find  in  my  heart  to  disgrace  my  man's  apparel  and  to 
cry  like  a  woman ;  but  I  must  comfort  the  weaker  vessel,  as  doublet 
and  hose  ought  to  show  itself  courageous  to  petticoat;  therefore, 
courage,  good  Aliena. 

And  the  novelty  and  freshness  of  this  woodland  life  seem 
to  exhilarate  her.  To  play  this  part  of  pert  and  saucy  lac- 
quey stimulates  her  wit  and  roguishness  to  the  utmost;  she 
was  never  so  sprightly  and  never  so  charming.  And  when  a 
lucky  fate  drives  Orlando  into  the  forest  too,  every  nerve  in 
her  finely-strung  nature  is  a-dance  with  healthy  joy: 

look  here  what  I  found  on  a  palm  tree.  I  never  was  so 
berhym'd  since  Pythagoras'  time,  that  I  was  an  Irish  rat,  which  I 
can  hardly  remember. 

Cel.     Trow  you  who  hath  done  this? 

Ros.     Is  it  a  man? 

Cel.  And  a  chain,  that  you  once  wore,  about  his  neck.  Change 
you  colour? 

Ros.     I  prithee,  who? 

Cel.  O  Lord,  Lord!  it  is  a  hard  matter  for  friends  to  meet; 
but  mountains  may  be  removed  with  earthquakes  and  so  encounter. 

Ros.     Nay,  but  who  is  it? 

Cel.     Is  it  possible? 

Ros.  Nay,  I  prithee  now  with  most  petitionary  vehemence,  tell 
me  who  it  is. 

Cel.  O  wonderful,  wonderful,  and  most  wonderful  wonderful ! 
and  yet  again  wonderful,  and  after  that,  out  of  all  whooping! 

Ros.  Good  my  complexion !  dost  thou  think,  though  I  am 
caparison'd  like  a  man,  I  have  a  doublet  and  hose  in  my  disposition? 
One  inch  of  delay  more  is  a  South-sea  of  discovery.  I  prithee,  tell 
me  who  it  is  quickly,  and  speak  apace. 

Is  he  of  God's  making?  What  manner  of  man?  Is  his 
head  worth  a  hat  or  his  chin  worth  a  beard? 

Cel.     Nay,  he  hath  but  a  little  beard. 

Ros.  Why,  God  will  send  more,  if  the  man  will  be  thankful. 
Let  me  stay  the  growth  of  his  beard,  if  thou  delay  me  not  the 
knowledge  of  his  chin. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  57 

Cel.  It  is  young  Orlando,  that  tripp'd  up  the  wrestler's  heels 
and  your  heart  both  in  an  instant. 

Ros.  Nay,  but  the  devil  take  mocking.  Speak  sad  brow  and 
true  maid. 

Cel.     1'  faith,  coz,  'tis  he. 

Ros.     Orlando? 

Cel.     Orlando. 

Ros.  Alas  the  day!  what  shall  I  do  with  my  doublet  and  hose? 
What  did  he  when  thou  saw'st  him?  What  said  he?  How  look'd 
he?  Wherein  went  he?  What  makes  he  here?  Did  he  ask  for 
me?  Where  remains  he?  How  parted  he  with  thee?  And  when 
shalt  thou  see  him  again?     Answer  me  in  one  word. 

Cel.  You  must  borrow  me  Gargantua's  mouth  first.  'Tis  a 
word  too  great  for  any  mouth  of  this  age's  size.  To  say  ay  and  no 
to  these  particulars  is  more  than  to  answer  in  a  catechism. 

Ros.  But  doth  he  know  that  I  am  in  this  forest  and  in  man's 
apparel?    Looks  he  as  freshly  as  he  did  the  day  he  wrestled? 

But  it  is  not  merely  the  sprightliness  of  health  and  high 
spirits  that  delights  us  in  Rosalind.  Her  charm,  as  I  have 
already  said,  is  an  intellectual  one.  There  is  no  wit  in 
Shakespeare  more  nimble  and  fluent.  And  she  is  as  wise  as 
she  is  witty.  I  think.  Rosalind's  talk  is  the  best  in  the  world. 
It  fairly  dances  with  wit  and  gayety;  and  it  is  very  wise  and 
pithy  too,  but  its  wisdom  is  not  put  up  in  cut  and  dried 
maxims.  Only  bores  talk  those.  Rosalind's  wisdom  is  un- 
conscious and  incidental,  bits  of  shrewd  observation  and 
comment  that  sparkle  in  the  laughing  stream  of  her  talk. 
And  this  talk  of  Rosalind's  is  not  only  full  of  sense,  but  of 
sensibility,  too.  It  is  all  suffused  with  healthy  emotion,  and 
every  now  and  then  in  the  midst  of  its  playful  mirth  there  is 
some  word  of  serious  tenderness  straight  from  her  woman's 
heart.  She  is  a'sound-hearted,  healthy  woman  of  full-veined 
humanity,  with  no  prudery  or  sentimentality,  self-poised, 
independent,  versatile:  but  in  all  her  masquerading  in  doub- 
let and  hose,  she  never  for  a  moment  loses  the  fineness  and 
delicacy  of  her  woman's  nature.  Her  sensibilities  are,  in- 
deed, much  more  delicate  than  those  of  Celia;  and  if  she 
does  not  yield  so  easily  to  depression  it  is  because  her  will  is 
so  firm  and  humor  so  natural  to  her  that  she  can  force  even 
her  most  melancholy  moods  to  wear  a  smiling  face.     And 


58     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

how  admirable  is  all  her  dialogue  with  Orlando.  How  she 
enjoys  calling  out  his  conferences,  rallying  his  rather  moon- 
ish  sentiment  with  her  saucy  badinage,  tormenting  him  by 
roguish  confessions  of  her  own  which  he  can  never  guess  are 
really  from  the  heart  of  his  very  Rosalind.  And  yet  when  her 
talk  is  most  pert  and  saucy,  how  far  is  it  from  being  loud  and 
bold.  So  much  of  woman's  wit,  and  grace,  and  sweetness  is 
there  in  it,  that  one  almost  wonders  Orlando  didn't  find  her 
out, — he  couldn't  have  disguised  himself  from  her  so,  you 
may  be  sure.  She  has  always  a  fear  that  he  may  detect  her. 
That  is  what  makes  her  raillery  so  exhilarating;  it 
is  the  spice  of  danger  that  gives  zest  to  her  sportiveness. 
Sometimes  her  real  love  will  speak  in  spite  of  herself 
in  some  word  of  timid  pathos  which  she  can  only  half  con- 
ceal,— 

"But  are  you  so  much  in  love  as  your  rhymes  speak?" — 
and  then  she  fears  that  he  will  guess  her  secret,  and  she  goes 
on  with  a  gush  of  her  liveliest  banter: 

.  .  .  There  is  a  man  haunts  the  forest,  that  abuses  our 
young  plants  with  carving  Rosalind  on  their  barks;  hangs  odes 
upon  hawthornes  and  elegies  upon  brambles;  all,  forsooth,  deifying 
the  name  of  Rosalind.  If  I  could  meet  that  fancy-monger,  I  would 
give  him  some  good  counsel,  for  he  seems  to  have  the  quotidian  of 
love  upon  him. 

Orl.  I  am  he  that  is  so  love-shak'd.  I  pray  you,  tell  me  your 
remedy. 

Ros.  There  is  none  of  my  uncle's  marks  upon  you.  He  taught 
me  how  to  know  a  man  in  love,  in  which  cage  of  rushes  I  am  sure 
you  are  not  prisoner. 

Orl.     What  were  his  marks? 

Ros.  A  lean  cheek,  which  you  have  not ;  a  blue  eye  and  sunken, 
which  you  have  not;  an  unquestionable  spirit,  which  you  have  not; 
a  beard  neglected,  which  you  have  not ;  but  I  pardon  you  for  that, 
for  simply  your  having  in  beard  is  a  younger  brother's  revenue. 
Then  your  hose  should  be  ungarter'd,  your  bonnet  unhanded,  your 
sleeve  unbutton'd,  your  shoe  unti'd,  and  every  thing  about  you 
demonstrating  a  careless  desolation.  But  you  are  no  such  man;  you 
are  rather  point-device  in  your  accoutrements,  as  loying  yourself 
than  seeming  the  lover  of  any  other. 

Orl.  Fair  youth,  I  would  that  I  could  make  thee  believe  I 
love. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  59 

Ros.  Me  believe  it!  you  may  as  soon  make  her  that  you  love 
believe  it;  which,  I  warrant,  she  is  apter  to  do  than  to  confess 
she  does.  That  is  one  of  the  points  in  the  which  women  still  give 
the  lie  to  their  consciences.  But,  in  good  sooth,  are  you  he  that 
hangs  the  verses  on  the  trees,  wherein  Rosalind  is  so  admired? 

Orl.  I  swear  to  thee,  youth,  by  the  white  hand  of  Rosalind, 
I  am  that  he,  that  unfortunate  he. 

Ros.     But  are  you  so  much  in  love  as  your  rhymes  speak? 

Orl.     Neither  rhyme  nor  reason  can  express  how  much. 

Ros.  Love  is  merely  a  madness,  and,  I  tell  you,  deserves  as  well 
a  dark  house  and  a  whip  as  madmen  do ;  and  the  reason  why  they  are 
not  so  punish'd  and  cured  is,  that  the  lunacy  is  so  ordinary  that  the 
whippers  are  in  love  too. 

Indeed  they  are.  For,  although  with  both  Rosalind  and 
Orlando,  it  was  a  case  of  love  at  first  sight,  I  think  every 
one  must  see  that  Rosalind  is  more  deeply  smitten.  Orlando, 
indeed,  protests  and  sonnetizes  most;  but  Rosalind's  is  the 
deeper  passion.  Hers  is,  in  fact,  a  much  deeper  and  stronger 
nature  than  Orlando's.  Ruskin  says  somewhere  that  Shake- 
speare has  no  heroes,  only  heroines.  Certainly  no  one  has 
shown  so  well  the  helpful  strength,  the  native  nobility  of 
woman's  nature.  No  mere  gentle  plasticity  of  soul  pleased 
him  in  woman.  Here,  it  is  true,  as  Ruskin  says,  that  Or- 
lando, noble  as  he  is,  would  be  almost  the  despairing  toy  of 
chance,  were  he  not  followed,  comforted,  saved,  by  Rosa- 
lind. For  underneath  all  her  lightness,  Rosalind  has  a  high 
womanly  conception  of  the  sacredness  of  her  affection.  It 
is  she,  you  remember,  who  says  almost  solemnly  to  Phebe, 
who  is  trying  to  play  the  rustic  flirt, 

Down  on  your  knees, 
And   thank  heaven,   fasting,   for  a  good  man's  love. 

But  there  isn't  the  slightest  particle  of  sentimentality  in  her 
love,  and  she  doesn't  like  to  utter  it  ore  rotundo.  People 
whose  feelings  have  much  depth  never  do.  And  so  she 
masks  it  under  that  arch  and  delightful  humor.  Is  there 
any  passage  in  Shakespeare  where  the  play  of  changing 
mood  is  more  charmingly  set  forth  than  this?  Orlando, 
you  remember,  has  agreed  to  woo  this  youth  Rosalind,  as  if 


60     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

he  thought  her — what  she  really  is.  He  has  come  tardily, 
and  she  has  roguishly  kept  him  waiting  some  moments  pre- 
tending not  to  see  him  while  she  talks  to  Jaques.  Then  she 
turns : 

Why,  how  now,  Orlando!  Where  have  you  been  all  this 
while?  You  a  lover  1  An  you  serve  me  such  another  trick,  never 
come  in  my  sight  more. 

Orl.     My  fair  Rosalind,  I  come  within  an  hour  of  my  promise. 

Ros.  Break  an  hour's  promise  in  love!  He  that  will  divide  a 
minute  into  a  thousand  parts,  and  break  but  a  part  of  the  thousandth 
part  of  a  minute  in  the  affairs  of  love,  it  may  be  said  of  him  that 
Cupid  hath  clapp'd  him  o'  the  shoulder,  but  I'll  warrant  him  heart- 
whole. 

Orl.     Pardon  me,  dear  Rosalind. 

Ros.  Nay,  an  you  be  so  tardy,  come  no  more  in  my  sight.  I 
had  as  lief  be  woo'd  of  a  snail. 

Orl.     Of  a  snail? 

Ros.  Ay,  of  a  snail ;  for  though  he  comes  slowly,  he  carries  his 
house  on  his  head;  a  better  jointure,  I  think,  than  you  make  a 
woman.  .  .  . 

Come,  woo  me,  woo  me;  for  now  I  am  in  a  holiday  humour  and 
like  enough  to  consent.  What  would  you  say  to  me  now,  an  I  were 
your  very  very  Rosalind  ? 

Orl.     I  would  kiss  before  I  spoke. 

Ros.  Nay,  you  were  better  speak  first;  and  when  you  were 
gravell'd  for  lack  of  matter,  you  might  take  occasion  to  kiss.  .  .  . 

•  ••••••••• 

.  .  .  Am  not  I  your  Rosalind? 

Orl.  I  take  some  joy  to  say  you  are,  because  I  would  be  talk- 
ing of  her. 

Ros.    Well,  in  her  person,  I  say  I  will  not  have  you. 

Orl.     Then  in  mine  own  person  I  die. 

Ros.  No,  faith,  die  by  attorney.  The  poor  world  is  almost 
six  thousand  years  old,  and  in  all  this  time  there  was  not  any  man 
died  in  his  own  person,  videlicet,  in  a  love-cause.  Troilus  had  h?s 
brains  dash'd  out  with  a  Grecian  club;  yet  he  did  what  he  could  to 
die  before,  and  he  is  one  of  the  patterns  of  love.  Leander,  he  would 
have  liv'd  many  a  fair  year  though  Hero  had  turn'd  nun,  if  it  had 
not  been  for  a  hot  mid-summer  night;  for,  good  youth,  he  went  but 
forth  to  wash  him  in  the  Hellespont  and  being  taken  with  the 
cramp  was  drown'd ;  and  the  foolish  chroniclers  of  that  age  found 
it  was — Hero  of  Sestos.  But  these  are  all  lies.  Men  have  died 
from  time  to  time  and  worms  have  eaten  them,  but  not  for  love. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  61 

Orl.  I  would  not  have  my  right  Rosalind  of  this  mind ;  for,  I 
protest,  her  frown  might  kill  me. 

Ros.  By  this  hand,  it  will  not  kill  a  fly.  But  come,  now  I  will 
be  your  Rosalind  in  a  more  coming-on  disposition;  and  ask  me  what 
you  will,  I  will  grant  it. 

Orl.     Then  love  me,  Rosalind. 

Ros.     Yes,  faith,  will  I,  Fridays  and  Saturdays  and  all. 

Orl.     And  wilt  thou  have  me? 

Ros.     Ay,  and  twenty  such. 

Orl.     What  sayest  thou? 

Ros.     Are  you  not  good  ? 

Orl.     I  hope  so. 

Ros.  Why  then,  can  one  desire  too  much  of  a  good  thing? 
Come,  sister,  you  shall  be  the  priest  and  marry  us.  Give  me  your 
hand,  Orlando.     What  do  you  say,  sister? 

Cel.     I  cannot  say  the  words. 

Ros.     You  must  begin,  "Will  you,  Orlando" — 

Cel.  Go  to.  Will  you,  Orlando,  have  to  wife  this  Rosa- 
lind? 

Orl.     I  will. 

Ros.     Ay,  but  when? 

Orl.     Why  now;  as  fast  as  she  can  marry  us. 

Ros.     Then  you  must  say,  "I  take  thee,  Rosalind,   for  wife." 

Orl.     I  take  thee,  Rosalind,  for  wife. 

Ros.  I  might  ask  you  for  your  commission ;  but  I  do  take  thee, 
Orlando,  for  my  husband.  There's  a  girl  goes  before  the  priest; 
and  certainly  a  woman's  thought  runs  before  her  actions. 

Orl.     So  do  all  thoughts;  they  are  wing'd. 

Ros.  Now  tell  me  how  long  you  would  have  her  after  you  have 
possess'd  her. 

Orl.     For  ever  and  a  day. 

Ros.  Say  "a  day,"  without  the  "ever."  No,  no,  Orlando.  Men 
are  April  when  they  woo,  December  when  they  wed ;  maids  are  May 
when  they  are  maids,  but  the  sky  changes  when  they  are  wives.  I 
will  be  more  jealous  of  thee  than  a  Barbary  cock-pigeon  over  his 
hen,  more  clamorous  than  a  parrot  against  rain,  more  new-fangled 
than  an  ape,  more  giddy  in  my  desires  than  a  monkey.  I  will  weep 
for  nothing,  like  Diana  in  the  fountain,  and  I  will  do  that  when 
you  are  dispos'd  to  be  merry.  I  will  laugh  like  a  hyen,  and  that 
when  thou  art  inclin'd  to  sleep. 

Orl.     But  will  my  Rosalind  do  so? 

Ros.     By  my  life,  she  will  do  as  I  do. 

Orl.    O,  but  she  is  wise. 

Ros.     Or  else  she  could  not  have  the  wit  to  do  this.     The  wiser, 
the  waywarder.     Make  the  doors  upon  a  woman's  wit  and  it  will 


62     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

out  at  the  casement;  shut  that  and  't  will  out  at  the  key -hole;  stop 
that,  't  will  fly  with  the  smoke  out  at  the  chimney. 

Cel.     You  have  simply  misus'd  our  sex  in  your  love-prate.  .  .  . 
Ros.    O  coz,  coz,  coz,  my  pretty  little  coz,  that  thou  didst  know 
how  many  fathom  deep  I  am  in  love ! 

Surely  we  can  guess.  You  all  remember  that  scene  when 
Rosalind  stands  by  to  hear  with  trembling  heart  the  story 
of  Orlando's  brotherly  love  and  valor,  as  his  brother  tells 
it,  until  at  the  sight  of  the  kerchief  wet  with  blood  her 
woman's  nature  can  endure  it  no  longer  and  she  swoons, 
only  to  unclose  her  eyes  again  in  a  moment  and  call  out  with 
an  attempt  at  the  old  saucy  manner: 

a  body  would  think  this  was  well  counterfeited! 
I  pray  you,  tell  your  brother  how  well  I  counterfeited.  Heigh- 
ho!  ..  .  But,  i'  faith,  I  should  have  been  a  woman  by  right. 

Counterfeiting  after  that  was  impossible,  and  when  next 
he  meets  her,  I  think.  Orlando  has  detected  her  disguise, 
though  with  manly  dignity  and  tenderness  he  will  not  say 
so,  nor  urge  any  disclosure  until  she  is  pleased  to  make  it. 
Where  is  there  a  more  charming  love  story? 

I  have  said  nothing  of  Adam,  the  old  servant,  whose 
fidelity  to  Orlando  is  such  a  proof  of  Orlando's  own  good- 
ness, or  of  Silvius,  the  type  of  rustic  faith,  and  Phebe,  the 
mincing,  kittenish  little  rustic  flirt,  with  the  jet  black  hair 
and  bugle-eyeballs,  whose  witless  and  heartless  attempts  at 
coquetry  with  Silvius  serve  to  show  the  more  admirably 
how  much  there  is  both  of  wit  and  heart  in  Rosalind. 

But  something  of  the  charm  of  the  play  evaporates  in  any 
attempt  to  analyze  its  different  characters.  It  is  only  when 
we  think  of  it  entire,  as  a  picture  of  fresh  woodland  health 
and  joy,  that  we  feel  its  charm.  To  read  it  or  to  remember 
it  is  a  true  refreshment  of  soul,  and  brings  not  only  light- 
some thoughts  but  some  of  that 

Spontaneous  wisdom  breathed  by  health, 
Truth  breathed  by  cheerfulness 

of  which  Wordsworth  sings. 


AS  YOU  LIKE  IT  63 

Only  I  must  remind  you  that  at  the  close  of  the  play, 
Shakespeare  sends  all  his  persons  back  into  the  world  again. 
We  cannot  sever  permanently  our  obligations  to  society,  nor 
hope  tor  very  long  to  fleet  the  time  carelessly  as  they  did 
in  the  golden  age.  Nor  would  we.  No  high  culture  of  soul  is 
possible  unless  we  take  up  our  duties  in  the  thick  of  life,  or 
even  any  high  enjoyment.  Delightful  as  is  the  Forest  of 
Arden,  to  stay  there  always  would  not  be  As  We  Like  It. 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA 

SHAKESPEARE  was  not  a  man  of  many  books.  I  sup- 
pose there  was  nothing  at  New  Place  that  could  by  any 
stretch  of  logic  have  been  called  a  library.  Yet  there 
were  three  or  four  books  that  he  must  have  known  thor- 
oughly, and  one  of  these,  perhaps  the  best  known  of  all,  was 
one  of  the  world's  great  books, — Plutarch's  Lives.  It  is 
pleasant  to  be  able  to  be  sure  that  we  know  in  just  what 
translation  he  read  it,  and  to  see  again  and  again  not  only 
the  thought  or  the  incident  but  even  the  language  of  that  ad- 
mirable old  translation  appearing  in  his  plays.  For  I  think 
there  has  never  been  a  translation  of  Plutarch  whose  English, 
can  for  a  moment  compare  in  vigor  and  dramatic  raciness 
with  that  old  one  by  Sir  Thomas  North,  1579,  which  Shake- 
speare must  have  used. 

Shakespeare's  play  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra  is  not  merely 
based  on  Plutarch's  Life  of  Mark  Antony,  but  it  follows 
Plutarch  so  closely  that  it  might  almost  be  called  a  poetic 
paraphrase.  In  no  one  of  Shakespeare's  plays  does  he  keep 
so  close  to  his  original.  In  most  cases,  as  you  know,  he  has 
drawn  from  his  authorities  only  names  and  the  outline  of  a 
plot;  here,  however,  not  only  the  names  but  the  essentials  of 
the  character  of  the  Antony,  the  Cleopatra,  the  Octavius  of 
the  play  are  all  to  be  found  in  Plutarch.  Enobarbus  is  per- 
haps the  only  person  of  much  importance  in  the  play  for 
whose  character  Shakespeare  did  not  get  many  essential 
hints  from  Plutarch.  And  more  than  this,  the  events  of  the 
play,  even  the  minor  and  incidental  ones  that  seem  as  you 
read  them  almost  certain  to  have  been  invented  by  Shake- 
speare are,  in  fact,  almost  all  taken  out  of  Plutarch ;  so  that 
it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  there  is  not  a  page  of  the 
drama  in  which  you  cannot  find  traces  of  Plutarch  either  in 
the  incidents  or  the  language. 

64 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  65 

Yet  the  art  of  Shakespeare  is  hardly  less  wonderful  here 
than  elsewhere.  What  Plutarch  has  merely  described,  he  has 
re-created.  Plutarch  gives  us  a  very  entertaining  account  of 
the  relations  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra;  Shakespeare  brings 
the  two  actually  before  us  in  all  the  abundant  energy  and 
passion  of  warm  breathing  life.  The  story  has  been  often 
told  and  has  been  dramatized  in  almost  every  literature;  but 
it  is  still  true,  I  believe,  that  it  is  to  Shakespeare  we  must  go 
if  we  would  know  the  living  Cleopatra  as  she  was,  and  un- 
derstand all  the  witchery  of  her  nature.  It  was  left  to 
Shakespeare  to  make  the  world  acquainted  with  Cleopatra. 

The  play  is,  of  course,  in  some  sense  a  sequel  to  the  Julius 
Casar;  but  it  is  certain  there  must  have  been  a  considerable 
interval  between  them.  Julius  Casar  is  one  of  the  ear- 
liest in  the  great  line  of  tragedies,  probably  the  first;  but  it  is 
clear  both  from  external  and  internal  evidence  that  the  An- 
tony  and  Cleopatra  must  be  put  somewhat  later.  In  manner 
it  is  akin  to  Shakespeare's  very  latest  work.  For  Shake- 
speare as  he  grew  older  seems  to  have  grown  more  and  more 
careless  of  mere  regularity  of  form,  and  more  and  more  full 
and  rich  in  the  content  of  his  language.  It  must  be  admitted, 
I  should  think,  that  the  construction  of  this  play  of  Antony 
and  Cleopatra  is  very  far  from  perfect.  In  the  endeavor 
to  follow  Plutarch  closely  Shakespeare  has  confused  the  ac- 
tion of  the  play,  broken  it  up  into  small  pieces, — there  are 
thirteen  scenes  in  the  Third  Act  and  fifteen  in  the  Fourth  Act, 
you  remember, — and  scattered  it  all  the  way  from  Rome  to 
Parthia.  Perhaps,  indeed,  he  does  in  this  way  give  us  an  idea 
of  the  extent  and  variety  of  the  interests  which  depended 
upon  Antony,  and  which  he  sacrificed  to  the  enchantress  of 
Egypt;  yet  it  seems  to  me  that  by  reducing  somewhat  the 
number  of  minor  characters  and  concentrating  the  action  in 
masses  he  might  have  given  to  the  form  of  the  play  greater 
unity  and  strength.  But  if  the  play  be  somewhat  faulty  in 
structure,  its  style,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that  of  Shake- 
speare's ripest  period, —  full,  energetic,  swift,  sententious.  In 
point  of  style,  indeed,  I  sometimes  think  it  is  his  very  best 
play.     There  are  scattered  through  it  passages  of  profound 


66     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

reflection,  bits  of  pithy  wisdom  that  drop  like  fruitful  seed 
into  the  mind.  Yet  Antony  and  Cleopatra  is  not  the  tragedy 
of  thought  but  the  tragedy  of  passion,  and  the  best  excel- 
lences of  its  style  are  such  as  we  should  expect  in  such  a  play. 
It  is  a  style  of  passionate  vigor  and  audacity.  It  abounds  in 
passages  in  which  thought  and  emotion  seem  fused  in  some 
glowing  phrase  that  makes  our  ordinary  English  seem  cold 
and  diffuse.  *  Coleridge  puts  it  well  when  he  speaks  of  the 
"happy  valiancy  of  style"  in  this  play  as  compared  with 
Shakespeare's  other  works.  There  is  an  eastern  opulence 
and  prodigality  in  its  sensuous  imagery,  an  intensity  and  des- 
peration in  its  passion,  under  which  language  fairly  seems  to 
strain  and  sway.  Any  one  familiar  with  the  course  of 
Shakespeare's  work  must  feel  sure,  it  seems  to  me,  that  the 
Antony  and  Cleopatra  belongs  to  the  period  of  his  greatest 
wisdom  and  vigor. 

Coleridge — to  whose  fragmentary  notes  I  frequently  re- 
fer because  they  seem  to  me  more  suggestive  than  any  other 
— says  that  "of  all  Shakespeare's  historical  plays  Antony  and 
Cleopatra  is  by  far  the  most  wonderful."  Other  good  critics 
have  pronounced  it  the  greatest  of  all  his  tragedies.  It  is 
perhaps  idle  to  attempt  to  fix,  in  this  way,  the  relative  rank  of 
Shakespeare's  great  dramas;  but  it  has  always  seemed  to  me 
that  the  impression  the  Antony  and  Cleopatra  leaves  upon 
us  is  peculiar,  and  in  some  respects  unlike  that  we  get  from 
any  other  of  Shakespeare's  works.  For  my  own  part,  I 
think  I  must  say  that  no  one  of  all  Shakespeare's  plays  ex- 
erts a  greater  fascination  upon  me  while  I  am  reading  it. 
Whether  one  will  or  no,  it  captivates  the  imagination,  stirs 
the  blood,  and  hurries  one  out  of  himself.  As  I  read  the 
story  of  Antony's  final  unavailing  struggle  with  his  passion 
for  the  serpent  of  old  Nile,  of  his  last  gaudy  night  and  the 
desperation  of  the  next  day,  I  can  never  sit  still  in  my  chair. 
But  when  one  puts  down  the  book,  the  spell  is  broken.  I 
think  the  play  does  not  take  hold  upon  our  thought  so  power- 
fully, or  so  often  steal  into  our  reflection  as  many  others  do. 
Antony  and  Cleopatra  are  not  the  companions  of  our  quiet 
hours,  as  Hamlet  and  Desdemona  and  Rosalind,  and  even 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  67 

Hotspur  and  Falstaff,  are.  While  we  move  with  them 
through  the  drama  they  captivate  our  senses  and  imagina- 
tion, sum  up  all  that  is  gorgeous  and  ensnaring,  but  they  do 
not  visit  our  reverie  or  enliven  our  solitude.  And  I  suppose 
a  moment's  thought  will  show  why  this  must  be  so.  This 
is  a  tragedy  of  passion,  and  passion  is  by  its  very  nature, 
spasmodic,  fitful,  transient.  We  are  not  merely  to  be  told 
what  is  the  power  of  Cleopatra,  we  must  be  made  to  feel 
it  ourselves.  Shakespeare  actually  makes  us  pass  for  a  time 
under  the  spell  of  her  magic,  that  we  may  know  in  what 
strong  toil  of  grace  Antony  is  entangled.  But  this  fascina- 
tion gets  so  little  hold  upon  intellect  or  reflection  that  when 
we  emerge  from  it,  the  play  leaves  less  in  our  recollections 
than  many  others  do.  This  may  be  all  a  fancy  of  mine, — 
but  so  it  has  always  seemed  to  me. 

And  while  I  should  by  no  means  call  Antony  and  Cleo~ 
patra  Shakespeare's  greatest  play,  I  am  inclined  to  think  it 
is  the  most  powerful  in  its  immediate  effect  upon  our  sen- 
sibilities, and  that  more  than  any  other  one  it  shows 
his  subtle  mastery  in  the  dramatic  rendering  of  changing 
passion. 

The  title  of  the  play  suggests  its  theme, — the  passion  of 
Antony  for  Cleopatra.  Everything  is  subservient  to  that. 
It  is  the  struggle  of  a  powerful  nature  in  the  toils  of  an  at- 
tachment which  he  knows  is  costing  him  his  friends,  his 
empire,  his  hopes,  and  what  is  worse,  his  native  force  of 
will,  and  mastery  of  circumstance;  an  attachment  which  he 
knows  is  based  on  no  truth  or  real  affection,  and  which  he 
never  dares  to  trust  with  calm  confidence  for  a  single  hour, 
but  which,  in  spite  of  all,  he  knows  he  shall  never  escape 
from,  and  which,  in  his  inmost  heart,  he  doesn't  wish  to  es- 
cape from.  The  hatred  of  all  his  countrymen  at  home,  the 
clouding  of  his  honor  and  the  repulse  of  his  ambition,  the 
loss  of  the  empire  of  half  the  world, — he  will  risk  them  all 
for  one  kiss  from  those  lips  that  he  knows  may  be  forsworn 
to-morrow: 

Let  Rome  in  Tiber  melt,  and  the  wide  arch 
Of  the  rang'd  empire  fall!     Here  is  my  space. 


68    AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Where  is  there  any  record  of  an  infatuation  so  entire,  a 
fascination  so  superb?  For  Shakespeare  takes  care  that  we 
shall  not  look  upon  the  downward  career  of  this  man  with 
mere  scorn.  He  knew  that  Antony  didn't  lose  the  world  for 
nothing!  He  knew  that  the  pleasures  of  sin,  though  but  for 
a  season,  are  very  real  pleasures  while  they  last;  and  he  had 
none  of  that  cheap  morality  that  is  afraid  to  say  so.  And  he 
makes  us  own  it  too.  As  we  read,  something  of  the  magic 
of  this  great  queen  o'  the  world  falls  over  us :  we  under- 
stand the  resistless  enchantment  that  is  upon  Antony.  And 
when  we  understand  that,  we  cannot  stand  aloof  in  cool  in- 
difference and  condemn  him.  Yet  all  this  dazzle  of  the 
lust  of  the  eyes  and  the  pride  of  life  does  not  for  a  mo- 
ment blind  us  to  the  moral  quality  of  Antony's  action  and 
the  inevitable  doom  which  he  is  every  moment  nearing. 
Precisely  there  resides  the  tragedy.  We  see  his  man- 
hood ebbing  away,  his  iron  resolution  growing  soft  and 
pliant,  and 

his  captain's  heart, 
Which  in  the  scuffles  of  great  fights  hath  burst 
The  buckles  on  his  breast, 

losing  its  soldier's  temper  and,  warmed  no  longer  by  any 
chaste  or  temperate  affection,  bursting  at  last  in  shame  and 
desperation.  I  think  Shakespeare's  moral  steadiness  is  no- 
where better  shown  than  by  the  way  in  which,  through- 
out the  drama,  he  depicts  with  even-handed  justice  at  once 
the  charms  and  the  results  of  sin. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Julius  Caesar  was  assassinated 
in  March  of  the  year  44  B.C.,  and  that  it  was  two  years 
after,  42,  that  the  conspirators  Brutus  and  Cassius  were  de- 
feated in  that  great  battle  near  Philippi  which  gave  the  gov- 
ernment of  the  Roman  world  to  the  Triumvirs,  Antony, 
Octavius,  and  Lepidus.  The  Eastern  Empire  fell  to  the 
share  of  Antony,  and  it  was  in  the  next  year,  41,  while  he 
was  on  an  expedition  against  the  Parthians,  that  he  had  that 
first  meeting  with  Cleopatra  on  the  river  Cydnus  which 
Shakespeare,  following  Plutarch,  has  described  so  gorgeously 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  69 

in  the  Second  Act  of  the  play.  The  result  of  this  meeting 
was  that  she  carried  him  away  the  captive  of  her  charms  to 
Alexandria,  where  he  gave  himself  up  to  all  luxury  for  more 
than  a  year.  At  home  in  Italy  his  wife,  Fulvia,  and  her 
brother,  Lucius,  without  his  knowledge  and,  it  was  thought, 
with  a  desire  to  call  him  away  from  Egypt,  made  war  upon 
Octavius;  but  before  the  war  was  fairly  begun  Fulvia  died, 
and  Antony  was  summoned  to  Rome  to  compose  matters. 
It  is  at  this  point  that  the  action  of  the  play  begins,  about 
40  B.C.  Between  this  date  and  the  death  of  Cleopatra  with 
which  it  closes,  about  ten  years  actually  elapsed;  but  in  no 
one  of  his  plays  is  Shakespeare  more  careless  about  making 
the  dramatic  sequence  correspond  closely  to  the  historical 
order  of  events ;  and  we  must  be  content  to  say  that  between 
the  marriage  of  Antony  to  Octavia  and  the  battle  of  Actium 
some  eight  and  a  half  years  must  be  supposed  to  intervene. 
The  events  of  the  last  two  and  a  half  Acts  are  all  included 
in  three  days. 

V  In  the  picture  of  Antony  which  he  draws  for  us  in  Julius 
Casar,  as  in  this  play,  Shakespeare  has  undoubtedly  left  out 
some  of  the  cruelty  and  excesses  with  which  Antony's  earlier 
years  had  been  stained,  and  has  dwelt  more  upon  his  courage, 
skill,  and  address.  Yet  in  neither  play  is  Antony  represented 
as  having  ever  been  a  very  noble  man.  As  we  see  him  in  the 
Julius  Casar  he  is  a  good  deal  of  a  demagogue,  fluent  of 
speech,  of  great  versatility,  and  of  much  energy  in.  emer- 
gencies. When  he  says  in  his  funeral  oration  over  Caesar 
that  he  is  "no  orator  as  Brutus  is"  but  only  a  plain,  blunt 
man  who  speaks  right  on,  we  know  of  course  that  he  is  the 
consummate  orator.  Yet  we  should  not  think  that  his  asser- 
tion is  entirely  a  piece  of  conscious  artifice.  He  was  not  ex- 
actly a  plain,  blunt  man,  but  he  was  an  impulsive,  rather  than 
a  crafty  man.  Plutarch  says,  in  fact,  that  he  was  a  plain 
man  without  subtlety,  and  therefore  over  late  found  out  the 
faults  that  others  committed  against  him.  He  was  evidently 
of  warm  passions,  many  generous  impulses,  and  most  engag- 
ing manners.  In  reality  selfish  and  designing,  he  had  none 
of  that  cold  and  wary  manner  which  makes  selfish  and  de- 


7o     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

signing  men  unpopular;  on  the  contrary,  he  seemed  hearty, 
open,  and  impetuous.  He  was,  in  fact,  often  liberal  and  mag- 
nanimous. He  showed  a  ready  appreciation  of  kindness  in 
his  friends  and  of  greatness  whether  in  friends  or  foes.  His 
grief  for  Caesar,  if  not  deep,  was  genuine,  and  that  was  why 
it  told  so  upon  the  populace.  And  you  remember  his  burst 
of  generous  admiration  over  the  body  of  the  fallen  Brutus  : 

This  was  the  noblest  Roman  of  them  all. 

•  •••••■ 

His  life  was  gentle,  and  the  elements 

So  mix'd  in  him,  that  Nature  might  stand  up 

And  say  to  all  the  world,  "This  was  a  man  I" 

To  these  qualities  he  added  a  reckless  daring,  a  capacity 
for  the  brilliant  and  unexpected  which  always  makes  a  man 
a  popular  leader,  if  not  a  safe  one.  His  very  vices  seemed 
to  display  a  certain  opulence  and  prodigality  of  nature  which 
cast  a  glitter  in  the  eyes  of  the  mob.  The  cold  Octavius  says 
with  a  twinge  of  envy  that  he  is 

the  abstract  of  all  faults 
That  men  do  follow. 

Yet,  reckless  and  profuse  as  he  was,  he  had  a  resolute  will 
and  an  iron  temper;  men  wondered  to  see  this  man,  who 
was  a  curled  and. fashionable  courtier  and  demagogue  at 
home,  put  on  an  almost  stoical  endurance,  a  genuine  Roman 
hardihood  in  the  field. 

A  great  man,  this  Antony,  certainly,  if  not  a  wise  one; 
combining,  as  few  men  of  his  time  could,  strength  and  bril- 
liancy, both  in  the  forum  and  in  the  field.  But  though  his 
character  had  many  striking  and  some  heroic  qualities,  it 
never  had  much  moral  elevation.  He  admired  virtue  and 
could  say  very  noble  things  about  it;  but  seemed  to  think, 
as  men  often  do,  that  a  generous  recognition  of  virtue  in 
others  would  atone  for  a  lack  of  it  in  himself.  I  think  you 
will  find  that  moral  ideas  never  took  any  real  hold  upon  him 
or  influenced  greatly  his  conduct.  All  his  struggles  to  get 
free  from  Cleopatra  are  prompted  by  a  wounded  pride  and 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  71 

by  a  constant  tormenting  knowledge  that  he  is  losing  his 
native  self-mastery  and  manhood,  rather  than  by  any  sense 
of  the  moral  degradation  involved  in  that  sweet  slavery. 

And  now  how  natural  it  is  that  such  a  man  as  this  should 
be  taken  captive  by  the  fascinations  of  the  great  Egyptian 
Queen.  He  is  already  well  advanced  in  life,  'when  gray 
doth  something  mingle  with  his  younger  brown,'  and  far 
past  those  early  days  when  the  dreams  of  imagination 
throw  a  halo  over  passion  that  seems  at  once  to  enhance 
and  to  excuse  it.  No  slight  or  passing  grace  can  ensnare 
his  fancy  now.  His  life  has  been  a  rough  and  changeful 
one,  and  he  stands  at  the  climax  of  his  ambition,  one 
third  of  the  world  at  his  feet.  Yet  empire  will  never 
satisfy  him.  He  is  not  of  the  stuff  out  of  which  the 
world's  great  conquerors  have  been  made.  His  nature 
is  too  impulsive,  passionate,  and  sensuous.  In  his  soul 
love  of  pleasure  is  always  struggling  with  love  of  power; 
and  he  feels  that  the  toils,  the  conflict,  the  anxiety  are 
a  dear  price  to  pay  for  the  lonely  and  hateful  eminence  of 
rule.  Then  upon  this  man's  life  burst  the  splendor  of  Cleo- 
patra. She  is  no  mere  girl :  though  younger  than  Antony  she 
is  "with  Phoebus'  amorous  pinches  black,  and  wrinkled  deep 
in  time."  Something  of  the  beauty  of  her  earlier  years  may 
have  faded;  but  it  isn't  chiefly  her  beauty  of  person  that  en- 
snares Antony.  It  isn't  for  a  moment  "o  be  supposed  that 
the  attachment  between  them  was  one  of  mere  animal  pas- 
sion. In  this  Queen  are  met  all  charms  that  can  delight  the 
rich  and  sensuous  imagination  of  Antony.  The  splendor  of 
her  court,  the  Eastern  magnificence  of  all  her  surroundings, 
the  strange  and  varied  opulence  of  her  own  nature,  all  de- 
lights, save  moral  ones,  combine  to  weave  that  fascination 
which  subdues  not  only  the  passions,  but  the  intellect,  the 
imagination,  the  will  of  this  man.  When  the  play  opens, 
Antony  is  already  won, — the  whole  drama  is  only  the  record 
of  a  series  of  struggles  to  be  free,  every  one  of  which  leaves 
him  more  entangled  than  before.  We  see  from  the  start  that 
his  doom  is  sealed.  Yet  at  first  his  nature  is  not  entirely  sub- 
dued.    When  the  messenger  arrives  that  informs  him  of  the 


72     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

death  of  Fulvia,  though  at  first  he  will  not  hear  the  unwel- 
come tidings,  yet  his  soldier's  nature  revives,  and  for  a  time 
gains  the  mastery.  There  is  a  burst  of  genuine  and  envying 
admiration  for  Fulvia,  whose  woman's  daring  shames  his 
idle  delays.  "There's  a  great  spirit  gonel"  cries  he;  and  for 
a  little  he  steels  himself  against  the  persuasions  of  Cleo- 
patra and  resolves  to  go  back  to  Rome.  He  goes ;  but  he  will 
not  think  of  breaking  away  from  his  bondage  permanently, 
but  gives  a  pledge  at  going  that  will  bind  him  to  return  and 
make  him  her  servant  while  he  is  away, — 

Quarrel  no  more,  [my  queen,]  but  be  prepar'd  to  know 

The  purposes  I  bear;  which  are,  or  cease, 

As  you  shall  give  the  advice.    By  the  fire 

That  quickens  Nilus'  slime,  I  go  from  hence 

Thy  soldier,  servant;  making  peace  or  war 

As  thou  affects. 

The  Second  Act  and  the  first  six  scenes  of  the  Third 
serve  to  show  the  variety  and  the  urgency  of  those  affairs  of 
state  which  should  have  kept  Antony  away  from  Egypt,  and 
the  growing  quarrel  with  Octavius  which  his  infatuation  for 
Cleopatra  at  last  raised  to  that  great  conflict  which  ended  in 
his  downfall.  The  third  Triumvir,  Lepidus,  that  "slight,  un- 
meritable  man,"  is  evidently  a  mere  puppet  in  the  hands  of 
the  other  two  that  they  will  play  with  so  long  as  they  choose 
and  then  throw  by.  He  is  a  weak,  easy  man,  and  there  is 
something  almost  pathetic  in  the  way  he  moves  about  in  the 
shadow  of  the  two  great  world-rulers  that  tower  on  either 
side  of  him,  and  affably  hopes  they  will  not  quarrel.  When 
they  do  seem  inclined  to  quarrel,  he  is  quite  unable  to  do  any- 
thing to  conciliate  them;  but  can  only  second  with  weak 
eagerness  any  suggestions  that  others  may  make :  'Soft, 
soft,  Csesar !'  '  'T  is  noble  spoken,  Antony,'  and  'Aye,  aye, 
worthily  spoken,  good  Maecenas.'  A  poor,  fluttering  little 
man,  doomed  to  fall  between  the  incensed  points  of  these 
two  mighty  opposites. 

Lepidus  once  gone,  Antony  and  Octavius  are  left  to  play 
out  the  great  game  alone.    As  Enobarbus  say9, 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  73 

Then,  world,  thou  hast  a  pair  of  chaps,  no  more; 
And  throw  between  them  all  the  food  thou  hast, 
They'll  grind  the  one  the  other. 

Octavius,  afterwards  the  great  Augustus  Caesar,  but 
now  a  youth  of  twenty,  is  in  the  play  the  cool,  quiet,  self- 
restrained  watchful  man  that,  as  I  understand,  the  historians 
take  him  to  have  been.  There  are  no  enthusiasms  or  illu- 
sions about  him.  No  heat  of  passion  will  blind  him,  and  not 
even  Cleopatra  can  ever  snare  him  in  her  strong  toil  of 
grace.  As  I  read  his  talk  in  this  play,  I  always  think  of  those 
two  great  marbles  in  the  Vatican,  the  one  the  bust  of  the 
young  Augustus,  the  other  the  statue  of  Augustus  the  Em- 
peror, both  of  which  alike  have  the  firm  compressed  lip,  the 
air  of  calm,  self-contained  dignity,  unflinching  resolution  and 
mastery.  His  shrewd  and  steady  diplomacy  is  set  in  admir- 
able contrast  with  the  impulsive  and  ardent  nature  of  An- 
tony. 

That  first  conference  between  the  two  men  after  An- 
tony reaches  Rome  seems  to  me  one  of  the  greatest  of 
Shakespeare's  many  passages  of  diplomatic  dialogue  (II,  i, 
27  ff.).  Both  men  are  embarrassed  at  the  meeting,  but  An- 
tony broaches  their  differences  at  once,  while  Caesar  is  in- 
clined to  be  reticent  and  doesn't  allow  himself  for  an  instant 
to  be  moved  from  his  imperturbable  calm.  With  unbroken 
dignity  he  urges  one  charge  after  another,  and  Antony 
somewhat  impatiently  refutes  them  all,  as  Octavius  doubt- 
less supposed  he  would.  For  he  had  really  no  intention 
of  quarreling  with  Antony  then;  it  wasn't  safe  while 
Pompey  was  so  threatening.  He  only  enumerates  the 
charges  that  he  may  seem  to  put  Antony  under  some  obliga- 
tion, and  may  the  more  emphasize  his  own  seeming  gener- 
osity in  the  proposition  he  knows  Agrippa  is  to  make  in  a 
moment.  Accordingly,  when  he  has  nothing  more  to  urge  he 
adds, 

Yet,  if  I  knew 
What  hoop  should  hold  us  stanch,  from  edge  to  edge 
O'  the  world  I  would  pursue  it. 

At  which  word  Agrippa,  who  knows  his  cue,  breaks  in: 


74     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

To  hold  you  in  perpetual  amity, 

To  make  you  brothers,  and  to  knit  your  hearts 

With  an  unslipping  knot,  take  Antony 

Octavia  to  his  wife;  whose  beauty  claims 

No  worse  a  husband  than  the  best  of  men ; 

Whose  virtue  and  whose  general  graces  speak 

That  which  none  else  can  utter.    By  this  marriage, 

All  little  jealousies,  which  now  seem  great, 

And  all  great  fears,  which  now  import  their  dangers, 

Would  then  be  nothing.     Truths  would  be  tales, 

Where  now  half-tales  be  truths;  her  love  to  both 

Would  each  to  other  and  all  loves  to  both 

Draw  after  her.     Pardon  what  I  have  spoke ; 

For  'tis  a  studied,  not  a  present  thought, 

By  duty  ruminated. 

To  all  of  which  Caesar  says  not  a  word:  till  Antony  asks 

Will  Cassar  speak? 

C/ES.     Not  till  he  hears  how  Antony  is  touch'd 
With  what  is  spoke  already. 

Ant.  What  power  is  in  Agrippa, 

If  I  would  say,  "Agrippa,  be  it  so," 
To  make  this  good? 

C^:s.  The  power  of  Caesar,  and 

His  power  unto  Octavia. 

The  impulsive  Antony  is  caught  and  adds, — 

May  I  never 
To  this  good  purpose,  that  so  fairly  shows, 
Dream  of  impediment!     Let  me  have  thy  hand. 
Further  this  act  of  grace;  and  from  this  hour 
The  heart  of  brothers  govern  in  our  loves 
And  sway  our  great  designs! 

I  think  he  is  sincere:  he  has  no  quarrel  with  Caesar,  and 
now  that  he  is  well  out  of  Egypt  he  can  keep  for  a  little  while 
his  resolution  to  be  himself  again  and  accept  the  rule  of  the 
one  half  world  that  is  his  due.  But  two  such  mates  in  empire 
could  not  stall  together  in  the  whole  world,  as  Caesar  says; 
and  we  see  that  it  is  Antony  who  must  go  down.  In  any 
case  he  must  have  proved  eventually  no  match  for  such  a 
cool  and  steady  gamester  as  Octavius;  but  as  it  is,  we  know 
he  will  be  seduced  from  duty  by  a  thousand  delicious  memo- 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  75 

ries  to  which  he  must  yield  at  last.  No  one  knows  him  so 
well  as  Enobarbus;  and  when  Maecenas  says,  "Now  Antony 
must  leave  her  utterly,"  it  is  Enobarbus  who  answers  quietly, 
"Never;  he  will  not." 

Shakespeare  has  given  us  buc  a  glimpse  of  the  modest 
beauty  and  grace  of  Octavia.  We  see  her  when  she  takes 
her  husband's  hand  and  says  farewell  to  her  brother — "The 
April's  in  her  eyes;  it  is  love's  spring,  And  these  the  showers 
to  bring  it  on";  and  we  see  her  once  more  when  she  comes 
back  again  alone  to  that  brother  in  the  vain  attempt  to  make 
peace  between  him  and  her  husband : 

Ay  me,  most  wretched, 
That  have  my  heart  parted  betwixt  two  friends 
That  do  afflict  each  other. 

And  that  is  almost  all.  Shakespeare  could  hardly  show  us 
more  of  her  without  lessening  that  impression  of  still 
modesty  which  is  her  greatest  charm.  She  has  evidently  a 
good  deal  of  her  brother's  quiet  firmness,  and  a  certain 
moral  dignity  of  character  that  win  our  respect:  she  was  a 
Roman  lady.  But  it  was  impossible  that  such  a  woman 
should  ever  make  Antony  forget  the  magic  of  that  serpent 
of  old  Nile.  "Octavia,"  says  Enobarbus,  "is  of  a  holy,  cold, 
and  still  conversation."  "Who  would  not  have  his  wife 
so?"  replies  Menas.  To  which  Enobarbus  returns,  "Not 
he  that  himself  is  not  so;  which  is  Mark  Antony." 

The  character  of  Pompey  is  not  elaborated  at  all:  he  is 
introduced,  I  suppose,  for  the  sake  of  fidelity  to  the  history, 
and  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  play  would  gain  in  unity 
and  conciseness  if  his  part,  as  well  as  some  others,  had  been 
left  out  altogether.  One  scene,  however,  in  which  he  figures, 
we  could  ill  spare, — the  banquet  which  Pompey  gives  the 
Triumvirs  on  board  his  galley.  It  does  not  advance  the 
action  of  the  play  at  all;  but  Shakespeare  apparently 
couldn't  resist  the  irony  in  this  picture  of  the  men  who  ruled 
the  whole  world  in  drunken  carouse  together.  Poor  Lepi- 
dus  is  the  first  to  succumb,  and  maunders  on  in  a  feeble 
attempt  to  give  some  intellectual  direction  to  his  talk: 


76     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Lep.     You've  strange  serpents  there? 
Ant.    Ay,  Lcpidus. 

Lep.    Your  serpent  of  Egypt  is  bred  now  of  your  mud  by  the 
operation  of  your  sun.    So  is  your  crocodile. 
Ant.    They  are  so. 

Lep.     I  am  not  so  well  as  I  should  be.  .  .  . 

Nay,  certainly,  I  have  heard  the  Ptolemies,  pyramises  are 
very  goodly  things;  without  contradiction  I  have  heard  that. 

What  manner  o'  thing  is  your  crocodile? 

Ant.  It  is  shap'd,  sir,  like  itself;  and  it  is  as  broad  as  it  hath 
breadth.  It  is  just  so  high  as  it  is,  and  moves  with  it  own  organs. 
It  lives  by  that  which  nourisheth  it ;  and  the  elements  once  out  of  it, 
it  transmigrates. 

Lep.    What  colour  is  it  of  ? 

Ant.     Of  it  own  colour  too. 

Lep.    'Tis  a  strange  serpent. 

Ant.    'Tis  so.    And  the  tears  of  it  are  wet. 

'Keep  off  these  quicksands,  Lepidus,  for  you  sink,'  calls 
Antony,  as  the  first  third  of  the  world  falls  under  the  table. 
Cold  Octavius  protests,  but  he,  too,  has  to  join  the  ring  and 
join  the  song: 

Come,  thou  monarch  of  the  vine, 
Plumpy  Bacchus  with  pink  eyne! 

•  ••••• 

With  thy  grapes  our  hairs  be  crown'd! 
Cup  us,  till  the  world  go  round, 
Cup  us,  till  the  world  go  round  1 

and  he  finds  with  odd  vexation  that  his  tongue  begins  to 
split  as  well  as  his  head.  The  rough  Pompey  grows  maudlin 
— "O,  Antony,  You  have  my  father's  house, — But  what? 
we  are  friends."  And  stout  Enobarbus  himself  is  so  dis- 
guised in  liquor  that  he  can  only  hiccup  out 

Ho!  says  'a.     There's  my  cap, 

as  the  great  men  take  themselves  off.  Only  Antony  keeps 
his  head  completely,  though  he  drinks  more  than  all  the 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  77 

rest.  He  had  been  in  Egypt.  What  a  picture  that!  As  one 
writer  says,  it  glows  before  us  like  some  warm  canvas  of 
Rubens.  And  what  a  hint  is  given  of  the  condition  of  a 
world  of  which  these  men  were  rulers  1 

Enobarbus  was  certainly  far  gone  at  Pompey's  banquet; 
but  that  is  the  only  time  he  loses  his  native  wisdom  and  self- 
command.  Enobarbus  is,  after  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  the 
most  interesting  character  of  the  play, — perhaps  the  only 
honest  man  in  it,  and,  I  am  much  inclined  to  think,  the 
wisest.  Since  there  is  no  part  which  he  can  take  in  the 
action,  he  goes  through  the  play  as  a  keen  quiet  observer, 
with  a  blunt  openness  of  spirit,  and  a  caustic  humor  which 
nobody  escapes.  Almost  all  the  wit  and  wisdom  of  the  play 
you  will  find  is  uttered  by  Enobarbus;  as  the  passion  is  by 
Antony  and  Cleopatra.  He  fully  appreciates  the  magic  of 
Cleopatra,  while  he  is  entirely  proof  against  it  himself.  He 
knows  Antony  thoroughly,  and  sees  from  the  start  whither 
his  course  inevitably  tends.  Through  it  all  he  is  Antony's 
best  friend,  and  his  judgment  never  is  at  fault.  At  first  he 
tries  to  sting  Antony  into  action  by  his  satire,  and  does 
actually  succeed  in  doing  so: 

Eno.     What's,  your  pleasure,  sir  ? 

Ant.     I  must  with  haste  from  hence. 

Eno.  Why,  then,  we  kill  all  our  women.  We  see  how  mortal 
an  unkindness  is  to  them;  if  they  suffer  our  departure,  death's  the 
word. 

Ant.    I  must  be  gone. 

Eno.  Under  a  compelling  occasion,  let  women  die.  It  were 
piry  to  cast  them  away  for  nothing;  though,  between  them  and  a 
great  cause,  they  should  be  esteemed  nothing.  Cleopatra,  catching 
but  the  least  noise  of  this,  dies  instantly;  I  have  seen  her  die  twenty 
times  upon  far  poorer  moment.  .  .   . 

Ant.     She  is  cunning  past  man's  thought. 

Eno.  Alack,  sir,  no;  her  passions  are  made  of  nothing  but  the 
finest  part  of  pure  love.  We  cannot  call  her  winds  and  waters 
sighs  and  tears;  they  are  greater  storms  and  tempests  than  almanacs 
can  report.  This  cannot  be  cunning  in  her;  if  it  be,  she  makes  a 
shower  of  rain  as  well  ;ls  Jove. 

Ant.    Would  I  had  never  seen  her! 

Eno.      O,   sir,   you   had   then   left   unseen   a  wonderful   piece  of 


78     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

work ;  which  not  to  have  been  blest  withal  would  have  discredited 
your  travel. 

Ant.    Fulvia  is  dead. 

Eno.     Sir? 

Ant.     Fulvia  is  dead. 

Eno.    Fulvia ! 

Ant.    Dead. 

Eno.  Why,  sir,  give  the  gods  a  thankful  sacrifice.  When  it 
pleaseth  their  deities  to  take  the  wife  of  a  man  from  him,  it  shows  to 
man  the  tailors  of  the  earth ;  comforting  therein,  that  when  old 
robes  are  worn  out,  there  are  members  to  make  new.  If  there  were 
no  more  women  but  Fulvia,  then  had  you  indeed  a  cut,  and  the  case 
to  be  lamented.  This  grief  is  crown'd  with  consolation ;  your  old 
smock  brings  forth  a  new  petticoat:  and  indeed  the  tears  live  in  an 
onion  that  should  water  this  sorrow. 

Ant.    The  business  she  hath  broached  in  the  state 
Cannot  endure  my  absence. 

Eno.  And  the  business  you  have  broach'd  here  cannot  be  without 
you;  especially  that  of  Cleopatra's,  which  wholly  depends  on  your 
abode. 

Ant.    No  more  light  answers. 

Nothing  could  have  so  effectually  spurred  the  doubting 
determination  of  Antony  as  these  words  of  Enobarbus  which 
set  his  own  weaker  thoughts  before  him  in  grave  irony. 
After  Actium  Enobarbus  has  no  hope  for  Antony;  but  he 
will  not  leave  him  like  the  rest.  Singularly  cool  in  temper 
he  seems  to  have  no  passionate  attachment  even  to  Antony, 
and  this  lack  of  enthusiasm  only  makes  his  grim  Roman  fi- 
delity show  the  more  noble.  He'll  follow  yet  the  wounded 
chance  of  his  master,  though  his  reason  sits  i'  the  wind 
against  it.     "Mine  honesty,"  says  he, 

and  I  begin  to  square. 

•  •  •  i  •  •  • 

yet  he  that  can  endure 
To  follow  with  allegiance  a  fallen  lord 
Doth  conquer  him  that  did  his  master  conquer, 
And  earns  a  place  i'  the  story. 

At  last,  for  one  fatal  hour,  his  reason  gets  the  better  of 
his  fidelity,  and  he  deserts  his  fallen  and  desperate  lord. 
But  when  Antony  with  that  impulsive  magnanimity  so  char- 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  79 

acteristic  of  him,  sends  his  forgiveness  and  bounty  after  his 
old  servant,  the  big  heart  of  Enobarbus  breaks  for  shame, 
and  he  dies  with  words  of  bitter  self-accusing  on  his  lips: 

Be  witness  to  me,  O  thou  blessed  moon, 
When  men  revolted  shall  upon  record 
Bear  hateful  memory,  poor  Enobarbus  did 
Before  thy  face  repent! 

•  ••••• 

O  sovereign  mistress  of  true  melancholy, 
The  poisonous  damp  of  night  disponge  upon  me, 
That  life,  a  very  rebel  to  my  will, 
May  hang  no  longer  on  me. 

•  ••••• 

O  Antony, 
Nobler  than  my  revolt  is  infamous, 
Forgive  me  in  thine  own  particular; 
But  let  the  world  rank  me  in  register 
A  master-leaver  and  a  fugitive. 
O  Antony!     O  Antony! 

And  you  will  see  how  this  spectacle  of  the  dying  fidelity  of 
Enobarbus  heightens  our  pity  for  Antony,  by  reminding  us 
of  that  native  generosity  of  soul  that  could  win  such  faith. 

But  all  the  characters  of  the  play  pale  beside  the  splendor 
of  the  great  Queen.  I  don't  see  how  any  man  can  read  the 
drama  without  coming  under  the  fascination  of  Cleopatra; 
but  it  is  hard  to  say  just  what  is  the  nature  of  the  charm. 
Shakespeare  has  drawn  no  character,  perhaps,  that  is  more 
intricate,  subtle,  and  dazzling, — and  I  may  add  he  has  drawn 
none  with  greater  vigor  and  heartiness  of  interest.  It  is 
certainly  not  an  unreasonable  conjecture  that  "the  dark  lady" 
of  the  later  sonnets  was  in  his  thoughts  and  inspired  his 
pen  as  he  drew  this  wonderfully  vivid  Cleopatra,  that  will 
now  always  be  the  Cleopatra  of  history;  and  it  is  another 
interesting,  though  perhaps  less  probable,  conjecture  that 
the  original  both  of  the  dark  lady  of  the  sonnets  and  of  the 
Cleopatra  of  the  play  was  that  strange  and  wildly  beautiful 
woman  whose  life  was  darkly  linked  with  that  of  several  of 
the  best  and  greatest  of  Englishmen,  Penelope  Devereux, 
the  sister  of  young  Essex,  and  the  Stella  of  Philip  Sidney. 


80     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Of  course  the  attraction  of  Cleopatra  does  not  reside 
principally  in  her  personal  beauty,  for  that  can  only  be  sug- 
gested in  poetry  and  Antony  doesn't  say  much  about  it.  And 
though  the  lower  and  more  sensual  side  of  her  nature  is 
everywhere  so  clearly  indicated  that  we  are  in  no  danger  of 
giving  her  our  respect,  yet  it  is  indicated  only  in  casual  and 
indirect  ways, — mostly  by  the  talk  of  her  attendants,  Iras 
and  Charmian.  We  are  not  allowed  to  think  the  great 
Queen  gross.  Her  principal  external  charm  would  seem  to 
have  been  an  imperial  grace  of  manner  which  could  defy  all 
convention  and  embellish  the  meanest  actions;  "I  saw  her 
once,"  says  Enobarbus, 

Hop  forty  paces  through  the  public  street; 

And  having  lost  her  breath,  she  spoke,  and  panted, 

That  she  did  make  defect  perfection. 

What  impresses  us  most  in  Cleopatra  is  a  kind  of  East- 
ern magnificence  and  voluptuousness,  an  opulence  of  nature. 
Her  imagination  is  gorgeous  in  its  coloring,  her  conceptions 
have  an  oriental  vastness  and  splendor,  her  passions  a  fire 
and  intensity  such  as  we  can  hardly  think  of  in  any  other 
woman  of  history.  She  is  no  longer  young;  her  beauty  is  in 
its  ripe  autumnal  maturity;  but  the  fulness  and  force  of  life 
in  her  character  is  wonderful.  There  is  a  bewitching 
changefulness  in  her  moods: — haughty  and  defiant,  then 
insinuating  and  tender;  magnificently  willful,  then  softly 
yielding;  splendidly  seductive,  then  timidly  retiring;  wildly 
mirthful,  then  classically  elegant;  superbly  proud,  then 
voluptuously  languishing, — she  is  all  these  by  turns,  and  all 
these  varied  moods  and  passions  seem  to  spring  spontane- 
ously out  of  the  exhaustless  riches  of  her  nature.  As  Eno- 
barbus says, 

Age  cannot  wither  her,  nor  custom  stale 
Her  infinite  variety. 

This  continued  changefulness  of  mood  is  partly  the  re- 
sult of  her  naturally  impetuous  and  unregulated  temper, 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  81 

which  knows  no  higher  motive  than  the  constant  chase  of 
pleasure;  but  it  is  heightened  by  all  the  arts  of  the  most 
perfect  coquetry,  which  she  has  practiced  so  long  that  they 
have  become  a  kind  of  second  nature.  You  can  never  tell 
exactly  how  far  she  is  sincere;  because,  indeed,  she  doesn't 
know  herself.  And  she  is  well  aware  that  in  this  variety 
and  intensity  of  excitement  resides  her  chief  attraction  for 
others,  as  well  as  the  only  happiness  for  herself.  For  you 
will  not  find  in  Cleopatra  any  repose  of  nature,  nor  any  of 
that  dignity  which  comes  from  settled  calm  of  soul.  Of 
course  that  would  be  impossible  without  self-command,  and 
some  moral  qualities  to  which  she  is  a  stranger.  And  that  is 
one  reason  why  her  fascination,  though  so  resistless,  is  so 
unsteady.  Antony  is  constantly  breaking  away  from  it,  and 
she  always  brings  him  back  again  by  some  fresh  surprise  of 
charm  more  potent  than  the  last. 

But  although  Cleopatra  has  all  the  weaknesses  of  a  pas- 
sionate nature  without  any  moral  steadiness,  yet  even  her 
very  wilfulness  and  impatience  have  a  queenly  volume  and 
force  that  command  our  admiration  if  not  our  respect;  so 
that  what  in  a  more  meager  and  acrid  nature  would  be 
mere  scolding  or  vacillation  is  lifted  into  poetry  by  this 
"wrangling  queen  whom  everything  becomes."  You  remem- 
ber how  she  received  the  messenger  that  brought  the  news 
of  Antony's  marriage  to  Octavia  (II,  v,  23  ff.).  The  play 
of  sudden  and  ungovernable  passion,  the  strange  mixture  of 
tenderness  and  anger,  make  an  admirable  picture  of  the 
varied  and  ill-regulated  temper  of  this  great  Queen. 
Very  characteristic  is  it,  too,  I  think,  that  the  Queen  when 
she  has  had  a  little  time  to  recover  from  the  first  shock 
of  her  anger  and  grief,  should  feel  sure  of  her  ability  to  re- 
cover Antony  (III,  iii,  7-45). 

Doubtless  we  should  not  apply  the  sacred  name  of  love 
to  a  passion  into  which  selfish  and  sensual  elements  so 
largely  enter;  yet  it  was  genuine  and  intense  and  engaged  the 
whole  nature  of  Cleopatra.  Antony  does  seem  to  her  the 
greatest  of  men.  His  rich  sensuous  tastes  are  akin  to  hers; 
and  his  daring,  his  profusion,  his  very  carelessness  of  the 


82     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

proud  prizes  of  empire  seem  to  her  the  proofs  of  a  great 
spirit.  Beside  such  a  man  the  kings  who  kissed  her  hand 
in  earlier  days  seem  small  in  her  memory:  great  Pompey 
was  a  weakling,  and  broad-fronted  Julius  himself  cold  and 
no  bounteous  lover.  You  remember  her  magnificent  out- 
burst to  Dolabella  after  Antony's  death;  it  will  indicate  how 
vast  Antony  had  loomed  before  her  imagination: 

Cleo.     I  dream'd  there  was  an  Emperor  Antony. 
O,  such  another  sleep,  that  I  might  see 
But  such  another  man ! 

Dol.  If  it  might  please  ye, — 

Cleo.     His  face  was  as  the  heavens;  and  therein  stuck 
A  sun  and  moon,  which  kept  their  course  and  lighted 
The  little  O,  the  earth. 

Dol.  Most  sovereign  creature, — 

Cleo.    His  legs  bestrid  the  ocean ;  his  rear'd  arm 
Crested  the  world ;  his  voice  was  propertied 
As  all  the  tuned  spheres,  and  that  to  friends; 
But  when  he  meant  to  quail  and  shake  the  orb, 
He  was  as  rattling  thunder.    For  his  bounty, 
There  was  no  winter  in  't ;  an  autumn  't  was 
That  grew  the  more  by  reaping.     His  delights 
Were  dolphin-like,  they  show'd  his  back  above 
The  element  they  liv'd  in.     In  his  livery 
Walk'd  crowns  and  crownets;  realms  and  islands  were 
As  plates  dropp'd  from  his  pocket. 

Dol.  Cleopatra! 

Cleo.    Think  you  there  was  or  might  be  such  a  man 
As  this  I  dream'd  of  ? 

Dql.  Gentle  madam,  no. 

Cleo.     You  lie,  up  to  the  hearing  of  the  gods! 

To  have  ensnared  such  a  man  as  that  in  her  strong  toil 
of  grace,  to  know  the  ruler  of  the  one  half  world  is  at  her 
feet,  that  satisfies  at  once  her  love  of  power  and  her  love 
of  pleasure  and  sets  her  pulses  a-throbbing  with  the  proud 
joy  of  passionate  conquest.  All  her  thoughts  of  him  while 
he  is  away  are  full  of  that  sweet  sense  of  mastery, — 

O  Charmian, 
Where  think'st  thou  he  is  now?  .  .  .  He's  speaking  now, 
Or  murmuring,  "Where's  my  serpent  of  old  Nile?" 
For  so  he  calls  me. 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  83 

Yet  with  all  this  pride  of  conquest  there  is  blended  some 
more  generous  feeling.  Her  real  admiration  for  Antony  has 
kindled  all  the  enthusiasm  of  her  nature,  and  has  centered 
upon  him  all  her  hopes  and  all  her  desires.  He  has  come 
to  seem  a  part  of  herself.  There  isn't,  to  be  sure,  any  entire 
unselHsh  devotion  in  her  passion,  but  a  kind  of  desperate 
self-abandonment.  She  has  thrown  all  the  witchery  of  her 
nature  into  the  conquest  of  this  man  and  she  has  magnifi- 
cently won:  henceforth  his  love  is  the  prize  without  which 
life  would  lose  its  value.  She  couldn't  die  for  him,  but  she 
could  die  with  him. 

After  the  shame  of  Antony's  defeat  at  Actium,  her  grief 
springs  in  great  part  from  sincere  sympathy  for  him,  rather 
than  from  mere  personal  apprehension  for  herself.  In  that 
first  interview  with  Antony  after  his  flight,  when  she  stands 
before  him  in  tears  and  wonder  to  see  this  lord  o'  the  world 
sunk  in  humiliation,  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  there  is 
in  her  demeanor — for  she  hardly  speaks  at  all — a  subtle 
mixture  of  woman's  tenderness  and  woman's  artifice.  It 
stirs  her  pitying  love  to  think  that  this  man  has  lost  an  em- 
pire for  her;  but  even  in  that  moment  she  is  half-conscious 
of  what  magic  there  is  in  her  tears: 

Eros.  Sir,  the  Queen. 

Ant.     O,  whither  hast  thou  led  me,  Egypt?     See, 
How  I  convey  my  shame  out  of  thine  eyes 
By  looking  back  what  I  have  left  behind 
'Stroy'd  in  dishonour. 

Cleo.  O  my  lord,  my  lord, 

Forgive  my  fearful  sails!     I  little  thought 
You  would  have  followed. 

Ant.  Egypt,  thou  knew'st  too  well 

My  heart  was  to  thy  rudder  tied  by  the  strings, 
And  thou  shouldst  tow  me  after.     O'er  my  spirit 
Thy  full  supremacy  thou  knew'st,  and  that 
Thy  beck  might  from  the  bidding  of  the  gods 

Command  me. 

Cleo.         O,  my  pardon  ! 

An  P.  Now   I  must 

I  o  the  young  man  send  humble  treaties,  dodge 
And  palter  in  the  shifts  of  lowness;  who 
With  half  the  bulk  o'  the  world  play'd  as  I  plcas'd, 


84     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Making  and  marring  fortunes.    You  did  know 
How  much  you  were  my  conqueror;  and  that 
My  sword,  made  weak  by  my  affection,  would 
Obey  it  on  all  cause. 

Cleo.  Pardon,  pardon! 

Ant.     Fall  not  a  tear,  I  say;  one  of  them  rates 
All  that  is  won  and  lost.    Give  me  a  kiss. 
Even  this  repays  me. 

After  this  Antony  is  never  proof  against  her  fascination 
while  in  her  presence,  even  when  he  most  suspects  she  may 
betray  him.  His  last  chance  for  heroic  self-mastery  vanishes 
when  he  confesses  hopelessly  to  himself  and  to  her  that  full 
supremacy  that  from  the  bidding  of  the  gods  themselves 
might  now  command  him.  He  feels  that  he  has  sacrificed  too 
much  for  his  passion  to  abandon  it  now.  His  native  force 
of  will  is  weakening,  and  his  shrewd  judgment  sunk  so  low 
that  he  can  send  a  personal  challenge  to  Octavius.  "I  see 
men's  judgements,"  says  Enobarbus,  "are  a  parcel  of  their 
fortunes;" 

.  .  .  That  he  should  dream, 
Knowing  all  measures,  the  full  Caesar  will 
Answer  his  emptiness!    Caesar,  thou  hast  subdu'd 
His  judgement  too. 

No,  not  Caesar;  but  Cleopatra  has.  The  last  and  lowest 
stage  of  his  fall  is  reached  when  he  has  ocular  proof  of 
Cleopatra's  willingness  to  make  terms  with  Caesar  (III,  xiii, 
8 1  ff.)  and  yet,  in  spite  of  it,  cannot,  will  not,  break  the 
chain  that  binds  him  to  her. 

From  that  hour  he  does  not  really  trust  her  an  instant. 
He  knows  there  is  no  truth  or  real  affection  in  her  attach- 
ment for  him;  but  he  will  not  think  of  it.  It  is  too  late  now 
to  retrieve  his  fate.  The  end  is  near.  He  sees  his  doom 
just  in  front  of  him;  but  he  will  make  the  drama  last  a  little 
longer,  if  he  may,  intoxicate  for  yet  a  little  space  his  senses 
and  his  soul,  and  die  in  desperation  under  that  enchantment. 
As  he  calls  about  him  his  followers  that  night  for  one  last 
banquet,  his  words  are  all  a-tremble  with  suppressed  emotion 
and  warm  with  that  impulsive  kindness  of  feeling  which 
always  attached  men  to  him.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  more 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  85 

thrilling  scene  than  that  (IV,  ii)  ;  it  is  the  lightning  before 
death. 

Next  day  he  fights  like  a  madman,  and  at  its  close  he 
doesn't  dare  to  let  this  temper  of  desperation  cool  and  give 
him  a  moment's  time  for  thought.  As  he  comes  in  at  night- 
fall from  the  world's  great  snare  once  more  uncaught  to 
meet  the  Queen,  there  is  no  hope  or  trust  in  his  greeting,  but 
the  passion  of  desperate  abandonment  which  he  means  shall 
never  cool  again.  He  will  keep  this  sweet  poison  burning 
in  his  veins  till  the  end  comes: 

O  thou  day  o'  the  world, 
Chain  mine  arm'd  neck ;  leap  thou,  attire  and  all, 
Through  proof  of  harness  to  my  heart,  and  there 
Ride  on  the  pants  triumphing! 

•  ••••••• 

My  nightingale, 
We  have  beat  them  to  their  beds.    What,  girl !  though  grey 
Do  something  mingle  with  our  younger  brown,  yet  ha'  we 
A  brain  that  nourishes  our  nerves,  and  can 
Get  goal  for  goal  of  youth. 

But  when  on  the  morrow  the  Egyptian  sails  turn  in  flight 
and  he  sees  that  all  is  over,  it  is  no  surprise  to  him,  and  he 
leaps  too  quickly  to  the  angry  conclusion  that  Cleopatra  has 
betrayed  him.  He  cannot  longer  force  himself  to  believe  the 
sweet  falsehood  that  she  is  true.  He  could  never  live 
steadily  in  that  illusion;  it  seems  he  must  die  without  it  now. 
The  fury  of  desperation  has  spent  itself.  Left  alone  for 
a  little  with  the  one  follower  that  still  is  faithful  to  him 
he  looks  backward  over  his  years,  sees  all  the  vast  hopes 
of  his  life,  the  pageantry  of  his  power  dissolved  and  vanish- 
ing into  vacancy.  There  are  few  passages  in  Shakespeare 
of  more  noble  imagery  or  more  moving  pathos  than  this: 

Ant.     Eros,  thou  yet  behold'st  me? 

Eros.  Ay,  noble  lord. 

Ant.     Sometime  we  see  a  cloud  that's  dragonish  ; 
A  vapour  sometime  like  a  bear  or  lion, 
A  tower'd  citadel,  a  pendent  rock, 
A  forked  mountain,  or  blue  promontory 


86     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

With  trees  upon  't,  that  nod  unto  the  world, 

And  mock  our  eyes  with  air.    Thou  hast  seen  these  signs ; 

They  are  black  vesper's  pageants. 

Eros.  Ay,  my  lord. 

Ant.    That  which  is  now  a  horse,  even  with  a  thought 
The  rack  dislimns  and  makes  it  indistinct, 
As  water  is  in  water. 

Eros.  It  does,  my  lord. 

Ant.    My  good  knave  Eros,  now  thy  captain  is 
Even  such  a  body.     Here  I  am  Antony; 
Yet  cannot  hold  this  visible  shape,  my  knave. 
I  made  these  wars  for  Egypt ;  and  the  Queen, — 
Whose  heart  I  thought  I  had,  for  she  had  mine, 
Which  whilst  it  was  mine  had  annex'd  unto  't 
A  million  more,  now  lost, — she,  Eros,  has 
Pack'd  cards  with  Caesar,  and  false-play'd  my  glory 
Unto  an  enemy's  triumph. 
Nay,  weep  not,  gentle  Eros;  there  is  left  us 
Ourselves  to  end  ourselves. 

But  even  the  very  last  moments  of  this  man  Antony 
must  be  beguiled  by  the  arts  of  the  woman  for  whom  he  had 
wasted  his  life.  As  he  speaks,  the  messenger  enters  with  the 
false  tidings  that  Cleopatra  is  dead — dead  with  his  name 
upon  her  lips: 

Ant.  Dead,  then? 

Mar.  Dead. 

Ant.    Unarm,  Eros;  the  long  day's  task  is  done, 
And  we  must  sleep.  .  .  .  Off,  pluck  off! 
The  seven-fold  shield  of  Ajax  cannot  keep 
The  battery  from  my  heart.  .  .  . 

•  ••••••*•* 

No  more  a  soldier.     Bruised  pieces,  go; 

You  have  been  nobly  borne. — From  me  a  while. — 

[Exit  Eros. 
I  will  o'ertake  thee,  Cleopatra,  and 
Weep  for  my  pardon.     So  it  must  be,  for  now 
All  length  is  torture;  since  the  torch  is  out, 
Lie  down,  and  stray  no  farther.  .  .  . 

•  ••••••••• 

Seal  then,  and  all  is  done. 
Eros! — I  come,  my  queen! — Eros! — Stay  for  me! 
Where  souls  do  couch  on  flowers,  we'll  hand  in  hand, 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  87 

And  with  our  sprightly  port  make  the  ghosts  gaze. 

Dido  and  her  /Eneas  shall  want  troops, 

And  all  the  haunt  be  ours.     Come,  Eros,  Eros! 

No  more  heroic  resolves,  no  more  heroic  regrets;  now 
the  end  has  come  for  this  ruler  of  the  world,  he  is  already 
dead  to  all  best  worth  the  living,  and  he  can  raise  his  hopes 
only  high  enough  to  wish  for  a  continuation  in  another  world 
of  that  sweet  slavery  for  which  he  had  been  content  to  barter 
all  that  is  noblest  in  this  one.  That  is  the  crowning  pathos 
of  his  last  gasp, — 

I  am  dying,  Egypt,  dying;  only 
I  here  importune  death  a  while,  until 
Of  many  thousand  kisses  the  poor  last 
I  lay  upon  thy  lips. 

He  has  gained  more  than  the  whole  world,  but  he  has  lost 
his  own  soul. 

About  the  closing  hours  of  Cleopatra  herself  Shake- 
speare has  thrown  a  pathetic  majesty  which  makes  us  almost 
forget  her  weakness.  Nothing  in  her  life  became  her  like 
the  leaving  it.  The  death  of  Antony  breaks  up  the  fountains 
of  her  woman's  heart,  and  all  the  nobler  elements  of  her 
passion  for  him  cry  out  in  her  pathetic  lament,  as  she  re- 
covers from  her  swoon  and  finds  him  dead  in  her  arms: 

Iras.  Royal  Egypt, 

Empress! 

Char.     Peace,  peace,  Iras! 

Cleo.     No  more  but  e'en  a  woman,  and  commanded 
By  such  poor  passion  as  the  maid  that  milks 
And  does  the  meanest  chares.     It  were  for  me 
To  throw  my  sceptre  at  the  injurious  gods; 
To  tell  them  that  this  world  did  equal  theirs 
Till  they  had  stolen  our  jewel.     All's  but  naught; 

,  How  do  you,  women? 

What,  what!  good  cheer!     Why,  how  now,  Charmian! 
My  noble  girls!     Ah,  women,  women,  look, 
Our  lamp  is  spent,  it's  out!     Good  sirs,  take  heart. 
We'll  bury  him;  and  then,  what's  brave,  what's  noble, 
Let's  do  it  after  the  high  Roman  fashion, 


88     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

And  make  Death  proud  to  take  us.     Come,  away; 
This  case  of  that  huge  spirit  now  is  cold. 
Ah,  women,  women!  come;  we  have  no  friend 
But  resolution  and  the  briefest  end. 

There  is  nothing  left  but  death  for  her  now.  Had  she 
not  known  that  her  arts  would  be  wasted  on  Octavius,  she 
might  not  yet  have  despaired  of  life  and  further  conquests; 
but  knowing  the  uselessness  of  further  attempts  she  does  not 
think  of  them  now.  Her  passionate  grief  and  longing  for 
Antony  really  seem  to  her  the  only  motive  of  her  resolve. 
But  to  die  with  calm  resolution  is  impossible  for  Cleopatra, 
who  has  never  done  anything  in  her  life  except  on  passionate 
impulse.  She  strives  to  intensify  her  determination  by  going 
over  again  in  thought  all  that  majesty  of  Antony  that  had 
won  her  admiration;  she  forces  herself  to  paint  before  her 
excited  imagination  in  all  its  bitter  details  the  shameful  al- 
ternative of  captivity : 

I 

Will  not  wait  pinion'd  at  your  master's  court ; 

Nor  once  be  chastis'd  with  the  sober  eye 

Of  dull  Octavia.    Shall  they  hoist  me  up 

And  show  me  to  the  shouting  varletry 

Of  censuring  Rome?    Rather  a  ditch  in  Egypt 

Be  gentle  grave  unto  me! 

Haughty  and  sensuous  to  the  end,  she  will  think  the  last 
dismissal  easier  if  she  may  take  it  in  company  with  her 
women  and  in  circumstances  of  state  that  shall  stimulate  her 
imagination  and  heighten  her  emotions.  She  has  lived 
proudly;  she  will  die  proudly: 

Now,  Charmian! 
Show  me,  my  women,  like  a  queen.     Go  fetch 
My  best  attires;  I  am  again  for  Cydnus 
To  meet  Mark  Antony. 

The  end  is  wonderful.  At  the  supreme  moment,  her 
resolution  falters  and  she  rouses  herself  to  that  passionate 
longing  for  Antony  which  shall  make  death  easy;  she  will 
claim  credit  for  all  that  was  best  in  her  affection  for  him, 
she  will  dare  to  call  him  husband  now: 


ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA  89 

Cleo.     Give  me  my  robe,  put  on  my  crown ;  I  have 
Immortal  longings  in  me.     Now  no  more 
The  juice  of  Egypt's  grape  shall  moist  this  lip. 
Yare,  yare,  good  Iras;  quick.     Methinks  I  hear 
Antony  call;  I  see  him  rouse  himself 
To  praise  my  noble  act;  .  .  .  Husband,  I  come! 
Now  to  that  name  my  courage  prove  my  title! 
I  am  fire  and  air;  my  other  elements 
I  give  to  baser  life.     So;  have  you  done? 
Come  then,  and  take  the  last  warmth  of  my  lips. 
Farewell,  kind  Charmian ;  Iras,  long  farewell. 

[Kisses   them.     Iras  falls  and  dies.] 
Have  I  the  aspic  in  my  lips?    Dost  fall? 
If  thou  and  nature  can  so  gently  part, 
The  stroke  of  death  is  as  a  lover's  pinch, 
Which  hurts,  and  is  desir'd.     Dost  thou  lie  still? 
If  thus  thou  vanishest,  thou  tell'st  the  world 
It  is  not  worth  leave-taking. 

This  proves  me  base. 
If  she  first  meet  the  curled  Antony, 
He'll  make  demand  of  her,  and  spend  that  kiss 
Which  is  my  heaven  to  have.    Come,  thou  mortal  wretch, 

[To  an  asp,  which  she  applies  to  her  breast.] 
With  thy  sharp  teeth  this  knot  intrinsicate 
Of  life  at  once  untie.     Poor  venomous  fool, 
Be  angry,  and  dispatch. 

Yet  even  in  that  moment  there  is  a  last  flash  of  the  old  de- 
fiant joy  of  conquest  as  she  thinks  how  she  has  defrauded 
the  great  Caesar  of  his  triumph, — 

O,  couldst  thou  speak, 
That  I  might  hear  thee  call  great  Cssar  ass 
Unpolicied  ! 

It  is  the  last  word  of  the  serpent  of  old  Nile, — the  queen 
is  dead;  but  the  woman  breathes  again  with  that  last  word 
which  tells  what  pangs  and  joys  of  motherhood  had  sanctified 
some  hours  even  of  this  woman's  life,  and  left  memories  that 
lingered  longest  as  the  light  was  fading  out  of  her  eyes: 

Cleo.  Peace,  peace! 

Dost  thou  not  see  my  baby  at  my  breast, 
That  sucks  the  nurse  asleep? 

Char.  O,  break!    O,  break! 


9o     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Cleo.     As  sweet  as  balm,  as  soft  as  air,  as  gentle, — 
O,  Antony! — Nay,  I  will  take  thee  too: 

[Applying  another  asp  to  her  arm.] 
What  should  I  stay — 

And  as  this  "gorgeous  tragedy  in  sceptered  pall" 
sweeps  by  us  to  its  solemn  close,  who  can  turn  away  without 
feeling  that  this  human  life  of  ours  is  too  high  a  thing  to  be 
wasted  upon  pleasures  however  splendid,  and  that  swift 
upon  the  heels  of  our  proudest  transgressions  walk  the 
stern-eyed  retributions  of  offended  law : 

The  glories  of  our  blood  and  state 
Are  shadows,  not  substantial  things; 

There  is  no  armor  against  fate; 
Death  lays  his  icy  hands  on  kings: 

•  ••••• 

Only  the  actions  of  the  just 

Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  their  dust. 


THE  WINTERS  TALE 

DURING   the   years  of  his  greatest  literary   activity 
Shakespeare    certainly    spent    most   of   his   time    in 
London.     His  home,  indeed,  was  still  in  Stratford; 
his  father  and  mother  so  long  as  they  lived  were  there;  his 
wife  and  children  were  there;  and  we  may  well  believe  his 
thoughts  and  his  heart  were  often  there  too.    Tradition  re- 
cords that  he  always  visited  Stratford  at  least  once  a  year; 
and  it  is  certain  that  all  through  his  dramatic  career  he 
planned  to  go  back  there  some  day,  and  spend  his  declining 
years  in  those  scenes  which  must  have  been  dear  to  him  from 
boyhood,  growing  old  among  a  family  who  might  inherit 
his  honors  and  his  estates.      He  had  purchased  the  most 
goodly  house  in  this  village  and  more  than  a  hundred  acres 
of  broad  sweeping  meadow  land  in  the  country  near  by,  and 
we  can  safely  believe  that  after  the  first  few  years  of  the 
new  century  his  visits  to  Stratford  must  have  been  longer 
and  more  frequent.     At  what  time  he  quitted  London  for 
good  and  came  home  to  live  at  New  Place  cannot  now  be  de- 
termined; it  may  have  been  as  early  as  1609,  it  may  possibly 
have  been  as  late  as  the  first  months  of  1613.     It  seems  to 
me  most  probable,  on  the  whole,  that  it  was  early  in  1610. 
His  fortunes  had  prospered;  he  was  a  wealthy  man,  most 
likely  the  wealthiest  man  of  his  native  village.     But  it  was 
with  chastened  feelings  and  something  of  that  tempered  joy 
that  comes  from  hard  experience  and  disappointment  that 
Shakespeare,  as  one  thinks,  gave  up  the  tumult  and  struggle 
of  his  career  abroad  and  came  home  to  accept  and  enjoy  the 
lot  that  heaven  had  given  him.     One  hope  of  his  life  was 
frustrate, — he  had  no  son.      His  only  boy,   Hamnet,   had 
died  years  before.     The  only  grandchild  that  he  lived  to 
have  in  his  arms  was  a  girl,  the  child  of  his  eldest  daughter, 
Susanna;  and  now  that  his  father  was  gone  and  two  of  his 

91 


92     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

brothers  had  died  childless,  he  seems  to  have  been  left  alone 
to  bear  a  name  that  would  die  with  him.  But  his  wife  was 
there,  loyal  to  his  love  still,  however  much  he  may  perchance 
have  tried  hers  in  some  of  the  darker  passages  of  his  Lon- 
don life,  and  as  dear  to  him  now,  I  believe,  in  that  afternoon 
time  of  reconciliation  and  of  trust  as  when  he  wooed  her  in 
the  early  days  of  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.1  His 
daughters  were  there,  one  living  hard  by  her  father's  house, 
happily  wedded  and  with  a  prattling  infant  just  old  enough 
to  form  some  words  of  that  great  speech  ennobled  by  the 
name  of  Shakespeare,  the  other  still  living  at  New  Place 
with  her  mother,  and  just  of  that  age  her  mother  was  when 
Will  Shakespeare  first  came  over  the  fields  to  Shottery. 
And  all  about  was  the  same  fair  country,  gently  sloping  hill 
and  forest  and  meadows  and  hedges  and  slow-flowing  river, 
that  landscape  which  had  been  always  in  his  thought  and  of 
which  we  have  so  often  caught  glimpses  in  his  poetry. 

It  was  in  such  surroundings,  in  the  quiet  of  these  familiar 
scenes,  that  Shakespeare,  as  we  believe,  wrote  three  plays, 
the  last  written  entirely  by  him, — Cymbeline,  The  Tempest, 
The  Winter's  Tale.  These  last  plays  entirely  his  own  are 
in  some  respects  unlike  anything  else  of  Shakespeare's; 
and  every  one  must  feel  that  they  grew  out  of  the  grave 
calm,  the  domestic  peace  of  his  later  years.  The  great  ques- 
tions of  life  are  solved  or  put  aside  as  insoluble;  the  great 
passions  are  calmed.  The  plays  are  not  tragedies,  but  end 
in  some  kind  of  reconciliation  and  peace.  Yet  they  are  not 
comedies;  the  humor  is  grave  and  wise,  sometimes  for  a  lit- 
tle delightfully  roguish,  but  no  longer  dominant  or  obtru- 
sive, pervading  the  whole  rather  than  making  itself  felt  at 
any  one  point.  As  the  plays  are  each  based  on  some  roman- 
tic tale,  they  may  perhaps  best  be  called  Romances,  rather 
than  either  Tragedies  or  Comedies.  Yet  their  temper  is 
hardly  romantic.    There  is  a  mellow,  autumnal  feeling  about 

1  This  refers  to  a  charming  theory  it  was  Professor  Winchester's  humor 
to  suggest  in  his  lecture  on  Midsummer  Night's  Dream, — that  the  play  was 
in  substance  an  actual  dream  of  Shakespeare's  one  night  after  he  had  been 
to  see  Anne  Hathaway.  The  date  determined  for  the  play  is,  of  course, 
much  later.     [L.  B.  G.] 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  93 

them.  All  three  turn  mostly  upon  the  strength  and  truth 
of  the  domestic  affections;  and  they  may  be  called,  more 
truly  than  any  other  dramas  of  Shakespeare,  plays  of  home. 
The  brightness  of  early  imagination  is  toned  into  the  softer 
hues  of  reality;  the  ardor  of  youthful  passion  has  cooled.  If 
there  is  love-making,  it  is  described  not  now  with  the  rapture 
of  a  lover,  but  with  the  wise  and  tender  solicitude  of  a 
father.  It  isn't  Romeo  and  Juliet  now,  but  Florizel  and 
Perdita.  And  besides  this  general  tone  of  grave  serenity 
and  conciliation,  one  may  notice  three  more  specific  pecu- 
liarities of  these  latest  plays.  In  each  one  there  is  a  central 
character  sorely  tried  by  some  misunderstanding  or  wrong, 
suffering  patiently  and  winning  back  at  last  by  forgiveness 
and  unwavering  moral  strength  the  trust  that  was  always 
deserved.  In  two  of  the  plays  this  character  is  a  wife 
shamefully  mistrusted  by  her  husband,  yet  true  to  him  and 
true  to  herself  through  it  all, — Imogen  and  Hermione. 
Secondly,  the  plays  are  almost  the  first  ones  in  which  we  find 
childhood  and  early  youth  depicted  with  deep  and  yearning 
paternal  sympathy.  Miranda,  Perdita,  and  those  two  boys 
in  Cymbeline, — Shakespeare's  thoughts  seem  to  dwell  upon 
these  charming  young  people  with  almost  pathetic  concern. 
And  then,  thirdly,  there  are  in  all  three  of  these  plays  some 
exquisite  country  scenes,  glimpses  of  hill,  forest,  or  garden 
which  seem  to  show  with  what  quiet  delight  the  eye  of  the 
great  master  was  feeding  upon  the  rural  beauty  around  his 
home. 

It  would  be  hard  to  say  which  of  the  three  plays  is  best; 
each  has  its  especial  charm.  Cymbeline  has  that  matchless 
character,  Imogen,  the  perfect  flower  of  womanhood  in 
Shakespeare.  In  The  Tempest  the  wise  and  noble  figure  of 
Prospero  seems  to  me  to  represent  more  nearly  than  any 
other  the  character  of  Shakespeare  himself  in  the  maturity 
of  his  later  years;  I  am  persuaded  that  the  more  Prospero  is 
studied,  the  stronger  will  be  the  conviction  that,  in  many  re- 
spects, he  is  the  great  magician,  Shakespeare  himself.  But 
I  have  chosen  to  close  this  brief  series  of  lectures  with  some 
remarks  upon  The  If 'inter's  Tale,  partly  because  it  is  prob- 


94     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ably  the  last  entire  play  that  Shakespeare  ever  wrote,  but 
principally  because  it  seems  to  me  to  exemplify  better  than 
either  of  the  others  all  the  peculiarities  I  have  mentioned, 
and  because  it  is  the  one  of  the  three  that  I  feel  most  certain 
must  have  been  inspired  by  Shakespeare's  renewed  family 
life  at  Stratford.  I  must  believe  that  Shakespeare's  portrait 
of  Hermione  is  a  tribute  to  that  wifely  affection  which  I  fear 
he  may  have  put  sadly  to  the  proof  but  which  was  true  to 
him  through  all.  In  Perdita  I  fancy  we  may  see  some  traits 
of  Judith  Shakespeare  as  she  seemed  to  her  father's  partial 
eyes;  and  when  Shakespeare  wrote  such  lines  as  these,  can 
you  doubt  of  whom  he  was  thinking? 

Looking  on  the  lines 
Of  my  boy's  face,  methoughts  I  did  recoil 
Twenty-three  years,  and  saw  myself  unbreech'd 
In  my  green  velvet  coat,  my  dagger  muzzl'd, 
Lest  it  should  bite  its  master,  and  so  prove, 
As  ornaments  oft  do,  too  dangerous. 
How  like,  methought,  I  then  was  to  this  kernel, 
This  squash,  this  gentleman.     Mine  honest  friend, 
Will  you  take  eggs  for  money? 

Mam.     No,  my  lord,  I'll  fight. 

Leon.     You  will !  Why,  happy  man  be  's  dole !  My  brother. 
Are  you  so  fond  of  your  young  prince  as  we 
Do  seem  to  be  of  ours? 

Most  certainly  he  had  in  his  memory  then  that  boy  of  his, 
missed  more  than  ever  now, — the  boy,  Hamnet,  who  died 
when  a  lad  of  eleven,  some  fifteen  years  before,  and  left  a 
long  sorrow  in  his  father's  heart.  That  sorrow  speaks  re- 
peatedly in  this  play,  if  I  read  between  its  lines  aright;  as  in 
that  touching  outburst  of  Leontes  in  the  last  Act  when 
Pauline  mentions  this  young  Mamillius,  who  too  had  then 
been  dead,  you  remember,  some  fifteen  years, 

Prithee,  no  more;  cease.     Thou  knowst 
He  dies  to  me  again  when  talk'd  of. 

And  as  to  the  homely  country  folk,  the  shepherd  and  the 
clown,  and  Mopsa,  and  Dorcas,  surely  they  are  all  of  good 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  95 

Stratford  peasantry,  and  akin  to  Shakespeare's  early  Strat- 
ford friends,  Bottom,  and  Quince,  and  Snug,  and  the  rest. 
Perdita's  pretty  garden  was  at  Shottery  I  know,  for  it  is 
blooming  still  and  I  have  picked  her  flowers  there  myself. 

The  plot  of  The  Winter's  Tale,  like  that  of  As  You  Like 
It,  Shakespeare  borrowed  from  one  of  those  long  meander- 
ing romances  that  were  so  popular  in  his  youth.  Like  Lodge 
and  other  of  his  fellow  dramatists,  Greene  wrote  a  number 
of  long  prose  romances,  through  which  his  charming  lyrics 
are  scattered.  One  of  these  romances  called  Pandosto  was 
the  source  of  the  plot  of  The  Winter's  Tale.  The  first  three 
Acts  of  the  drama,  up  to  the  supposed  death  of  the  Queen 
follow  the  romance  very  closely, — so  closely,  indeed,  that  it 
would  seem  that  Shakespeare  must  have  read  it  very  re- 
cently, or  have  written  with  it  before  him, — but  the  last  half 
of  the  drama  diverges  more  widely  from  the  romance.  In 
Greene's  story  the  Queen  actually  dies,  and  at  the  close,  the 
King,  her  husband,  in  despair  poisons  himself;  the  restora- 
tion of  Hermione,  the  device  of  the  statue,  and  the  delight- 
ful ending  of  the  play  are  all  original  with  Shakespeare.  So 
also  are  the  three  persons,  Paulina,  Autolycus,  and  the  Shep- 
herd's son.  But  of  course  here,  as  almost  everywhere, 
Shakespeare  owes  to  his  authorities  nothing  more  than  the 
outline  of  a  plot;  the  characters  of  the  play  are  of  his  own 
creating,  and  its  general  tone  is  entirely  different  from  that 
of  the  romance. 

In  no  one  of  his  plays  does  Shakespeare  show  a  more  val- 
iant disregard  of  all  restrictions  of  fact  and  rule.  In  de- 
fiance of  all  laws  of  dramatic  unity  he  goes  so  far  as  to 
divide  his  play  sharply  into  two  parts,  and  put  an  interval 
of  sixteen  years  between  them.  Perdita  is  an  infant  of  days 
at  the  close  of  the  Third  Act,  and  a  lass  of  sixteen  years  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Fourth.  He  has,  moreover,  crowded 
the  play  with  anachronisms  and  all  sorts  of  impossible  geog- 
raphy and  history.  On  the  mainland  of  Sicily  we  have  a 
King  who  receives  a  wife  from  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  a 
message  from  the  Delphic  oracle,  and  a  statue  from  Giulio 
Romano;    while    in    the    island    of    Bohemia,    besides   most 


96     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

charming  royal  people  in  disguise,  we  have  shepherds  who 
reckon  their  tods  of  wool  in  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence,  and 
Puritans  who  sing  psalms  to  hornpipes, — a  practice  which 
I  grieve  to  say  their  descendants  outside  of  Bohemia  have 
not  yet  quite  given  up. 

Perhaps  it  was  in  recognition  of  such  romantic  liberties 
that  Shakespeare  called  his  play  a  Winter's  Tale,  as  he  had 
once  before  called  a  play  of  pure  fancy  a  Dream;  and  you 
remember  that  Father  Time  is  made  to  come  in  as  a  chorus 
with  some  words  of  explanation  and  apology  for  the  great 
gap  he  has  made  between  the  Third  and  Fourth  Acts.  But 
for  these  violations  of  formal  accuracy,  which  would  have 
vexed  the  righteous  soul  of  a  Ben  Jonson,  Shakespeare  never 
cared  much,  and  as  he  grew  older  he  cared  less  and  less. 

The  story  of  the  first  half  of  the  play  is  very  briefly  told. 
Leontes,  King  of  Sicily,  suspects  his  wife,  Hermione,  of  in- 
fidelity with  Polixenes,  King  of  Bohemia,  who,  after  a  long 
visit  at  his  court,  is  now  just  going  home.     The  base  sus- 
picion once  fixed  in  the  mind  of  Leontes,  nothing  can  dis- 
abuse him  of  it.    One  of  his  trusted  advisers  discloses  his 
delusion  to  Polixenes  and  hastens  the  Bohemian  King  out  of 
Sicily.    This  only  increases  the  insane  jealousy  of  Leontes 
and  convinces  him  that  he  is  the  object  of  a  conspiracy  at 
home.    He  mercilessly  orders  that  the  infant  daughter  of 
Hermione  shall  be  exposed  to  death  in  some  remote  and 
desert  place,  and  hurries  the  Queen  herself,  yet  in  her  moth- 
er's weakness,  to  a  form  of  trial  before  himself,  where  he  is 
determined  to  inflict  the  harshest  penalty,  even  in  spite  of  a 
message  from  the  Delphic  oracle  which  pronounces  her  inno- 
cent.   But  before  the  dread  sentence  can  fall,  word  comes 
that  the  prince,  only  son  of  Leontes,  is  dead  for  very  grief 
and  shame  at  the  disgrace  that  is  come  upon  his  mother. 
Hermione  herself  at  this  tidings  swoons  away,  and  is  shortly 
after  reported  dead.    But  this  double  grief  opens  the  eyes 
of  Leontes  to  his  own  cruel  folly,  and  in  bitter  repentance  he 
vows,  thereafter,  once  a  day  to  visit  the  chapel  where  they 
lie.    "And  tears  shed  there  shall  be  my  recreation." 

The  jealousy  of  Leontes,  at  first  reading,  seems  sudden 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  97 

and  unprovoked.  This  is  due  in  part  to  the  necessary  con- 
ciseness of  dramatic  structure  which  makes  it  impossible  to 
do  more  than  suggest  the  causes  of  a  passion  like  this.  Yet 
a  careful  reading  of  the  play  will  show,  I  think,  that  Shake- 
speare has  made  no  mistake,  and  that  the  infatuation  of 
Leontes  is  neither  inexplicable  nor  unnatural.  For  the  jeal- 
ousy of  Leontes  is  not,  like  the  jealousy  of  Othello,  an  alien 
conviction  slowly  forced  upon  an  open  and  confiding  nature 
by  what  seems  irresistible  evidence.  Leontes  is  naturally  of 
a  suspicious,  mistrustful  temper.  There  are,  to  be  sure, 
some  noble  things  about  him :  he  is  upright  and  honest  in 
purpose,  and,  if  he  is  stern  to  others,  he  would  be  quite  as 
harsh  to  himself  as  to  any  one  else;  his  father's  love  for 
M amillius  and  his  fond  memories  of  all  his  wedded  life  with 
his  Queen  show  how  deep  are  his  affections.  But  the  poison- 
ous juice  of  jealousy  and  moodiness  taints  his  blood  by 
nature.  With  a  wife  more  vivacious  in  manner  and  of  less 
calm  self-command  his  life  would  long  before  have  been  em- 
bittered; but  Hermione  knew  his  temper  very  well,  and  her 
conduct  has  been  always  so  wise  and  loving. that  not  even  one 
so  exacting  as  Leontes  could  find  anything  to  shake  his  confi- 
dence. As  it  is,  his  love  for  Hermione  is  so  precious  to  him 
that  there  is  a  kind  of  selfish  exclusiveness  in  it,  and  a  mor- 
bid fear  that  any  one  else  shall  share  her  smiles.  He  is 
jealous  even  of  her  friendship,  and  doesn't  like  to  have  her 
express  any  high  regard  for  any  one  but  himself.  I  suppose 
this  is  the  reason  that,  while  he  is  trying  to  persuade  Polix- 
enes  to  stay  longer,  she  stands  by  quietly  without  a  word, 
until  Leontes  asks  her  to  join  her  persuasions  to  his.  And 
you  will  note  that  he  does  this  with  a  kind  of  uneasy  feeling 
that  he  is  sharing  with  his  friend  favors  that  belong  pecu- 
liarly to  himself,  and  a  fear  that  Hermione  will  be  too  per- 
suasive. As  he  listens  to  the  playful  yet  dignified  urgency  of 
her  invitation,  and  sees  that  Polixenes  will  yield  and  stay,  he 
is  vexed  to  find  that  she  seems  as  attractive  to  any  one  else  as 
she  does  to  him;  and  I  think  it  is  a  firm  truth  of  nature  that 
this  should  turn  his  thought  into  bitter  sweet  reminiscence  of 
all  her  winsomeness  in  the  past.    At  last  he  asks : 


98     AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Is  he  won  yet  ? 

Her.  He'll  stay,  my  lord. 

Leon.  At  my  request  he  would  not. 

Hermione,  my  dearest,  thou  never  spok'st 
To  better  purpose. 

Her.  Never? 

Leon.  Never,  but  once. 

Her.     What!  have  I  twice  said  well?     When  was  't  before? 
I  prithee  tell  me;  cram  's  with  praise.  .  .  . 

My  last  good  deed  was  to  entreat  his  stay; 

What  was  my  first?     It  has  an  elder  sister, 

Or  I  mistake  you.     O,  would  her  name  were  Grace! 

But  once  before  I  spoke  to  the  purpose;  when? 

Nay,  let  me  have  't ;  I  long. 

Leon.  Why,  that  was  when 

Three  crabbed  months  had  sour'd  themselves  to  death, 
Ere  I  could  make  thee  open  thy  white  hand 
And  clap  thyself  my  love ;  then  didst  thou  utter 
"I  am  yours  for  ever." 

You  see  in  these  last  words  he  is  dwelling  on  that  sweet 
olden  time  with  a  haunting  mistrust  of  Hermione,  and  a 
vague  feeling  that  her  delay  implied  some  lack  of  entire  de- 
votion to  him  even  then.  The  germ  of  jealousy  once  planted 
in  the  mind  of  Leontes  all  the  subsequent  growth  of  that 
dire  disease  is  natural  enough.  It  is  not  a  noble,  pitying 
jealousy,  like  that  of  Othello,  which  thinks  most  not  of  itself 
but  of  the  truth  and  purity  debased,  and  moans  over  that,  "O 
the  pity  of  it,  Iago,  the  pity  of  it."  The  jealousy  of  Leontes 
is  selfish,  and  inexorable  towards  its  victim.  As  he  has  no 
facts  on  which  to  base  his  disbelief,  it  is  impossible  to 
convince  him  of  his  error;  a  thousand  vile  suspicions  crowd 
his  imagination  and  furnish  all  the  evidence  that  his  jealous 
temper  craves.  All  the  discretion  of  the  Queen  seems  to  him 
now  only  evidence  of  her  craft.  The  sudden  departure  of 
Polixenes  after  his  promise  to  stay  he  interprets  as  a  con- 
firmation of  his  doubts,  and  his  infatuation  grows  into  a 
flaming  passion  at  once.  Any  word  in  defense  of  Hermione 
or  question  of  his  justice  drives  him  into  a  rage;  and  if  he 
sends  to  inquire  of  the  oracle  it  is  only  to  satisfy  the  minds 
of  others;  for  himself  he  needs  no  further  proof: 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  99 

I  have  dispatch'd  in  post 
To  sacred  Delphos,  to  Apollo's  temple, 

Though  I  am  satisfi'd  and  need  no  more 
Than  what  I  know,  yet  shall  the  oracle 
Give  rest  to  the  minds  of  others,  such  as  he 
Whose  ignorant  credulity  will  not 
Come  up  to  the  truth. 

That  is,  he  means  to  use  the  authority  of  the  oracle  if  it  ap- 
prove his  intentions;  if  it  do  not,  he  will  defy  it. 

Yet  jealousy  so  violent  is  naturally  somewhat  transient, 
— a  passionate  mood,  rather  than  a  settled,  cold  distrust. 
Leontes  is  too  obstinate  and  wilful  to  give  up  his  delusion 
soon,  but  we  feel  that  he  will  sometime  come  to  regret  it. 
Even  when  the  trial  comes  on,  his  first  frenzy  of  conviction 
has  passed;  and  though  he  rejects  the  message  of  the  oracle 
as  he  had  before  resolved  he  would,  yet  when  the  tidings  of 
his  son's  death  are  brought  in  and  Hermione  swoons  before 
him,  the  cruel  illusion  dissolves;  with  the  mother  of  his  boy 
dying  there  before  him  he  see*  his  baseness, — 

I  have  too  much  believ'd  mine  own  suspicion. 
Beseech  you,  tenderly  apply  to  her 
Some  remedies  for  life.     Apollo  pardon 
My  great  profaneness  'gainst  thine  oracle! 

His  repentance  is  as  deep  and  as  passionate  as  his  sin  has 
been.  He  has  no  mercy  for  himself, — "I  have  deserv'd  All 
tongues  to  talk  their  bitt'rest."  It  is,  indeed,  a  solemn 
truth,  as  he  felt,  that  a  great  injustice  such  as  he  had  wrougiit 
can  never  be  atoned  for;  but  in  the  sixteen  weary  years  of 
solitary  life  that  followed  we  feel  that  he  conquers  at  last 
his  native  jealousy  of  temper,  and  gains,  by  that  long  suffer- 
ing, a  charity,  a  calmness,  and  a  self-command  which  make 
him  better  worthy  such  a  wife  as  Hermione. 

Among  the  whole  company  of  wedded  wives  in  Shake- 
speare's world,  some  perhaps  may  be  more  beautiful,  or 
more  engaging  than  Hermione,  but  certainly  there  is  no  one 
more  noble.  She  is  every  inch  a  queen,  and  yet  a  woman  first 
of  all.     I  think  always  of  Wordworth's  lines, 


ioo  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

A  perfect  woman,  nobly  planned, 
To  warn,  to  comfort,  and  command. 

There  is  always  a  certain  quietness  and  austerity  in  her  de- 
meanor. She  lacks  something  of  that  tenderness  and  anima- 
tion which  combine  with  strength  to  make  Imogen  the  crown 
of  womanhood  in  Shakespeare.  Hermione's  affections  are 
deep,  but  they  are  still  and  not  much  prone  to  outward 
expression;  one  who  did  not  know  her  well  might  think  her 
cold.  Even  in  her  most  familiar  converse  there  is  a  certain 
gracious  dignity  which  betokens  perfect  calmness  and  self- 
command.  I  think  this  queenly  courtesy  is  well  shown  in 
the  very  first  words  we  hear  her  speak,  as,  at  the  suggestion 
of  her  husband,  she  invites  Polixenes  to  stay  with  them 
longer.  The  sweetness  and  gentleness  of  her  character  are 
seen  best,  perhaps,  in  her  mother's  love  for  her  children; 
and  I  think  it  is  a  most  admirable  stroke  of  Shakespeare's 
art  to  show  us  that  pretty  bedtime  scene  with  the  boy,  Ma- 
millius  (II,  i).  It  is  upon  this  touching  scene  that  Leontes 
breaks  in  with  his  savage  charge, — "Give  me  the  boy:  I'm 
glad  you  did  not  nurse  him .  .  .  Bear  the  boy  hence ;  he  shall 
not  come  about  her."  The  terrible  accusation  astounds  her; 
but  she  does  not  sink  under  it.  Her  white  lips  tremble,  but 
she  doesn't  lose  he-  calm  self-command  as  she  answers, — 

Should  a  villain  say  so, 
The  most  replenish'd  villain  in  the  world, 
He  were  as  much  more  villain:  you,  my  lord, 
Do  but  mistake. 

As  her  husband  goes  on  to  load  her  with  reproaches,  his 
words  burn  to  her  heart's  core,  but  she  doesn't  weep  or 
swoon.  To  the  profoundest  depths  of  her  great  woman's 
heart  she  feels  what  an  insult  this  is;  but  even  at  that  mo- 
ment her  keenest  pain  seems  to  be  not  for  herself,  but  for  her 
husband.  To  think  that  he,  Leontes,  standing  there,  the 
father  of  her  Mamillius  and  of  her  child  unborn,  can  so  far 
mistake  her !  Yet  she  does  not  loathe  him,  but  pities  rather, 
and  you  will  go  far  to  find  nobler  words  than  those  with 
which  she  interrupts  his  wild  accusation : 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  101 

No,  by  my  life, 
Privy  to  none  of  this.     How  will  this  grieve  you, 
When  you  shall  come  to  clearer  knowledge,  that 
You  thus  have  publish'd  me!     Gentle,  my  lord, 
You  scarce  can  right  me  throughly  then  to  say 
You  did  mistake. 

It  is  only  when  under  some  such  great  trial  that  a  character 
like  that  of  Hermione  shows  all  its  wonderful  strength  and 
sweetness.  The  suspicion  of  her  husband  is  a  strange,  un- 
utterable wrong;  she  feels  it  as  a  nature  less  deep  and  calm 
never  could  feel  it.  All  her  womanhood  protests  against  it. 
Yet  she  bears  it  without  either  weak  submission  or  loud  com- 
plaint. She  has  not  been  much  used  to  seek  her  own  happi- 
ness and  she  can  do  without  it  now.  She  has  the  still  ap- 
provings  of  a  good  conscience;  and  she  has  the  fortitude  that 
comes  from  long  habit  of  self-sacrifice  and  self-command. 
She  can  suffer  and  be  strong.  "Good  my  lords,"  says  she 
to  the  nobles  as  she  is  to  be  led  away  to  prison: 

Good  my  lords, 
I  am  not  prone  to  weeping,  as  our  sex 
Commonly  are,  the  want  of  which  vain  dew 
Perchance  shall  dry  your  pities;  but  I  have 
That  honourable  grief  lodg'd  here  which  burns 
Worse  than  tears  drown.     Beseech  you  all,  my  lords, 
With  thoughts  so  qualified  as  your  charities 
Shall  best  instruct  you,  measure  me;  and  so 
The  King's  will  be  perform'd ! 

.  .  .  Adieu,  my  lord. 
I  never  wish'd  to  see  you  sorry;  now 
I   trust  I  shall. 

This  calm-eyed  greatness  of  soul,  this  pathetic  dignity  move 
our  deepest  loyalty,  and  stir  in  us  a  kind  of  reverence. 
There  is  an  awful  beauty  in  such  still,  unshaken  virtue. 

The  plea  of  Hermione  at  her  trial  is  certainly  one  of  the 
most  affecting  passages  in  Shakespeare.  It  is  the  union  of 
intense  emotion  with  perfect  calm  and  self-possession  that 
makes  her  words  go  straight  to  our  hearts.  One  can  see  the 
whole  scene  : — The  dark,   uneasy-eyed   Leontes,  tormented 


102  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

by  his  jealousy,  and  tormented  the  more  because  he  has  a 
haunting  feeling  that  he  may  be  wrong;  the  ring  of  pitying 
nobles,  the  tears  almost  forcing  themselves  into  their  eyes, 
and  their  hands  playing  nervously  with  the  swords  they  can 
hardly  keep  undrawn,  and,  in  the  center,  the  tall  pale  statue- 
like figure  of  Hermione,  speaking  slowly  those  plain  noble 
words,  every  one  from  the  bottom  of  her  deep  woman's 
heart.  She  will  only  assert  her  innocence;  she  will  not  con- 
descend to  parley  and  argument.  Nay  she  would  hardly  con- 
sent to  speak  at  all  for  the  sake  of  her  own  life,  or  even  her 
own  fame, — they  are  in  the  keeping  of  a  higher  court  than 
that;  but  her  mother's  heart  is  almost  breaking  to  think  that 
the  boy  she  loves  and  the  babe  just  born  must  bear  the 
stigma  of  her  shame.      It  is  for  them  she  speaks: 

for  honour, 
'Tis  a  derivative  from  me  to  mine, 
And  only  that  I  stand  for.     I  appeal 
To  your  own  conscience,  sir,  before  Polixenes 
Came  to  your  court,  how  I  was  in  your  grace, 
How  merited  to  be  so ;  since  he  came, 
With  what  encounter  so  uncurrent  I 
Have  strain'd  to  appear  thus;  if  one  jot  beyond 
The  bound  of  honour,  or  in  act  or  will 
That  way  inclining,  hard'ned  be  the  hearts 
Of  all  that  hear  me,  and  my  near'st  of  kin 
Cry  fie  upon  my  grave! 

•  ••••• 

More  than  mistress  of 
Which  comes  to  me  in  name  of  fault,  I  must  not 
At  all  acknowledge.     For  Polixenes, 
With  whom  I  am  accus'd,  I  do  confess 
I  lov'd  him  as  in  honour  he  requir'd, 
With  such  a  kind  of  love  as  might  become 
A  lady  like  me,  with  a  love  even  such, 
So  and  no  other,  as  yourself  commanded; 
Which  not  to  have  done  I  think  had  been  in  me 
Both  disobedience  and  ingratitude 
To  you  and  toward  your  friend.  .  .  . 

Sir,  spare  your  threats. 
The  bug  which  you  would  fright  me  with  I  seek; 
To  me  can  life  be  no  commodity. 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  103 

The  crown  and  comfort  of  my  life,  your  favour, 

I  do  give  lost;  for  I  do  feel  it  gone, 

But  know  not  how  it  went.    My  second  joy 

And  first-fruits  of  my  body,  from  his  presence 

I  am  barr'd,  like  one  infectious.     My  third  comfort, 

Starr'd  most  unluckily,  is  from  my  breast, 

The  innocent  milk  in  it  most  innocent  mouth, 

Hal'd  out  to  murder;  .  .  . 

•  ••••••• 

.  .  .  lastly,  hurried 
Here  to  this  place,  i*  the  open  air,  before 
I  have  got  strength  of  limit.     Now,  my  liege, 
Tell  me  what  blessings  I  have  here  alive, 
That  I  should  fear  to  die?    Therefore  proceed. 
But  yet  hear  this:  mistake  me  not;  no  life, 
I  prize  it  not  a  straw,  but  for  mine  honour, 
Which  I  would  free, — if  I  shall  be  condemn'd 
Upon  surmises,  all  proofs  sleeping  else 
But  what  your  jealousies  awake,  I  tell  you 
'Tis  rigour  and  not  law.  .  .  . 

As  she  ends,  and  knows  that  all  is  hopeless,  she  murmurs,  "O 
that  my  father  were  alive," 

and  here  beholding 
His  daughter's  trial!  that  he  did  but  see 
The   flatness  of   my  misery,   yet   with   eyes 
Of  pity,  not  revenge! 

Yet  all  this  she  could  have  endured, — the  suspicions,  the 
charge,  the  sentence,  the  reversal  of  the  oracle, — all  of  it 
her  firm  determination  might  have  borne  up  under ;  but  when 
at  that  moment  comes  the  news  that  her  boy,  her  first-born, 
is  dead  for  very  grief  and  pity  of  that  sorrow  he  cannot  un- 
derstand,— it  is  too  much.  Her  mother's  heart  breaks;  she 
swoons  away,  and  is  carried  out  for  dead. 

One  should  have  a  word  for  Paulina,  who  champions  the 
cause  of  Hermione  so  bravely,  if  not  so  wisely.  Paulina  is 
a  kind  of  mixture  of  Portia  and  Mrs.  Caudle.  She  has  a 
very  noble  and  generous  heart,  and — a  tongue.  She  is  one 
of  those  persons  who  think  the  truth  should  be  spoken  at  all 
times,  and  who  is  never  afraid  to  speak  it.  It  is  a  real  com- 
fort to  us  to  hear  her  tell  Leontes  what  she  thinks  of  him, 


104  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

but  he  takes  little  comfort  from  it,  and  what  is  worse  he 
probably  takes  little  profit  from  it  either;  for  Paulina  is  cer- 
tainly not  always  judicious  in  her  utterances.  Her  bravery 
in  forcing  herself  into  the  presence  of  Leontes  with  the  babe 
of  Hermione  does  more  credit  to  her  heart  than  her  head ; 
for  she  might  have  known  that  at  such  a  time  nothing  would 
be  so  sure  to  exasperate  him. 

Paul.  Good  my  liege,  I  come ; 

And,  I  beseech  you,  hear  me.  .  .  . 

I  say,  I  come 
From  your  good  queen. 

Leon.  Good  queen! 

Paul.  Good  queen,  my  lord, 

Good  queen ;  I  say  good  queen ; 
And  would  by  combat  make  her  good,  so  were  I 
A  man,  the  worst  about  you. 

Leon.  Force  her  hence. 

Paul.    Let  him  that  makes  but  trifles  of  his  eyes 
First  hand  me.    On  mine  own  accord  I'll  off, 
But  first  I'll  do  my  errand.    The  good  queen, 
For  she  is  good,  hath  brought  you  forth  a  daughter ; 
Here  't  is;  commends  it  to  your  blessing. 

Leon.  I'll  ha'  thee  burnt. 

Paul.  I  care  not ; 

It  is  an  heretic  that  makes  the  fire, 
Not  she  which  burns  in  't.    I'll  not  call  you  tyrant; 
But  this  most  cruel  usage  of  your  queen, 
Not  able  to  produce  more  accusation 
Than  your  own  weak-hing'd  fancy,  something  savours 
Of  tyranny,  and  will  ignoble  make  you, 
Yea,  scandalous  to  the  world. 

I  pray  you,  do  not  push  me;  I'll  be  gone. 
Look  to  your  babe,  my  lord: 

Paulina  is  not  likely  to  be  over-tender  in  speech  to  any  one. 
"If  I  prove  honey-mouthed,  let  my  tongue  blister,"  says  she; 
she  was  in  no  danger  of  that  trouble,  I  think.  She  is  plainly 
one  of  those  ladies  who  set  a  high  estimate  upon  the  power 
of  emphatic  advice.  She  doesn't  think  that  the  truth  ought 
to  hurt  any  one's  feelings,  and  isn't  over  careful  about  a 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  105 

"sweet  reasonableness"  of  manner.  Yet  those  are  often  very 
bright  truths  that  fly  like  sparks  from  the  hot  heart  of 
Paulina,  and  her  devotion  to  Hermione  is  so  entire  and  un- 
selfish that  we  cannot  withhold  our  admiration  from  it.  A 
brave,  kindly,  sound-hearted  woman, — though  perhaps  one 
is  a  little  glad  she  is  in  his  neighbor's  family.  The  highest 
proof  at  once  of  her  self-forgetfulness  and  her  self-com- 
mand is  that  for  sixteen  long  years  she  was  the  companion 
of  Hermione's  solitude  and  never  once  betrayed  it, — and 
that  with  her  gift  of  speech.  I'm  not  sure  but  this  is  the 
greatest  impossibility  in  the  play.  Shakespeare,  however, 
has  been  careful  to  remind  us  in  the  last  Act  that  whenever, 
in  those  years,  she  found  silence  over-burdensome,  she  could 
take  opportunity  to  stir  up  the  gift  that  was  in  her  by  put- 
ting Leontes  in  remembrance  of  his  past,  and  keeping  alive 
in  him  a  wholesome  feeling  of  penitence.  And  then  it  must 
be  noted,  that  Paulina  really  found  a  kind  of  satisfaction  in 
the  management  of  this  affair.  For  such  women  as  she  are 
never  content  unless  they  can  load  upon  themselves  a  burden 
of  other  people's  cares,  and  they  are  sure  to  find  or  make 
some  one  miserable  enough  to  put  a  pleasant  strain  upon 
their  sympathies.  And  I  suppose  that  was  why  when 
Hermione  is  united  to  her  husband  again  and  that 
charge  removed  from  Paulina,  Leontes  advises  her  to 
remarry  and  recommends  Camillo  to  her  care;  he  knew  that 
such  a  talent  for  anxiety  could  not  safely  go  unem- 
ployed. 

With  the  close  of  the  Third  Act  the  tragic  part  of  the 
play  ends.  Sixteen  years  have  passed  away  when  we  enter, 
in  the  next  Act,  that  pleasant  pastoral  land  of  Bohemia, 
which  I  think  must  lie  not  far  from  the  forest  of  Arden. 
The  Fourth  Act  is  an  idyl.  The  babe  of  Hermione,  Perdita, 
the  lost  one,  has  been  found  and  has  grown  to  the  verge  of 
womanhood  in  this  delightful  country,  under  the  care  of  a 
most  exemplary  old  Shepherd  and  his  wife  whom  she  re- 
gards as  her  parents.  And  now  she  is  wooed  by  the  son  of 
King  Polixcnes,  Prince  Florizel,  who  is  too  frank  and  good 
to  keep  anything  from  Perdita,  but  will  conceal  from  every 


106  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

one  else  his  noble  birth,  and  so  comes  to  pay  court  to  this 
charming  lass  in  the  guise  of  a  shepherd. 

The  first  stranger  we  meet,  however,  in  this  pleasant 
country  is  a  character  succinctly  described  in  the  list  of  dra- 
matis personam  as  "Autolycus — a  rogue." 

"When  daffodils  begin  to  peer, 

With  heigh!  the  doxy  over  the  dale, 
Why,  then  comes  in  the  sweet  o'  the  year; 

For  the  red  blood  reigns  in  the  winter's  pale. 

"The  white  sheet  bleaching  on  the  hedge. 

With  heigh !  the  sweet  birds,  O,  how  they  sing! 
Doth  set  my  pugging  tooth  on  edge ; 

For  a  quart  of  ale  is  a  dish  for  a  king." 

I  think  it  was  a  professor  of  Moral  Philosophy, — Wilson 
of  Edinburgh, — who  said  he  thanked  God  that  he  had  never 
lost  his  liking  for  bad  company.  Shakespeare,  I  take  it,  must 
have  had  a  similar  feeling.  I'm  sure  that  in  the  quiet  and 
freedom  of  his  outdoor  life  at  Stratford  he  must  have  found 
such  a  precious  vagabond  as  Autolycus  a  delightful  recrea- 
tion, even  if  some  of  the  family  linen  did  sometimes  disap- 
pear mysteriously.  For  this  last  of  Shakespeare's  delectable 
rogues  has  a  laughing,  boyish,  roving  temper  which  must 
have  something  seductive  in  it  to  any  man  not  altogether 
hidebound  in  conventions  and  proprieties.  He  appeals  to 
that  native  impulse  to  vagrancy  which  we  all  feel  now  and 
then.  We  never  get  beyond  a  disposition  to  play  truant 
sometimes  from  the  duties  and  dignities  of  life. 

As  to  the  thievish  propensities  of  Autolycus  they  are  so 
natural  to  him,  that  you  can  hardly  blame  him  any  more 
than  you  can  the  robin  that  takes  the  cherries  from  your 
trees.  The  warmth  of  spring  and  the  song  of  birds  stirs  in 
him  an  instinct  for  roving  and  roguing,  and  he  really  seems 
not  quite  responsible  for  his  small  knaveries.  Society  has 
never  been  able  to  force  its  conventions  upon  him;  he  is  still 
in  a  state  of  nature.  There's  nothing  criminal  about  him; 
he  doesn't  accept  your  ideas  of  property,  that's  all.  He  has 
tried  some  more  methodical  ways  of  life  in  his  time, — has 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  107 

been  an  ape-bearer,  a  process-server,  has  carried  about  a 
puppet-show  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  and,  with  a  desperate  re- 
solve to  settle  in  life,  once  married  a  tinker's  widow  :  but  all 
these  attempts  put  too  much  restraint  on  the  natural  freedom 
of  his  disposition,  and  he  has  now  subsided  into  plain  rogue. 
But  he  is  a  most  picturesque  and  versatile  rogue.  "He  will 
sing  you  several  tunes  faster  than  you'll  tell  money,"  and 
when  he  chooses  to  turn  peddler  he  will  cry  his  ribbons  and 
broideries  till  "you  would  think  a  smock  was  a  she-angel,  he 
so  chants  to  the  sleeve-hand  and  the  work  about  the  square 


on't." 


"Lawn  as  white  as  driven  snow; 
Cyprus  black  as  e'er  was  crow ; 

Bugle-bracelet,  necklace  amber, 
Perfume  for  a  lady's  chamber; 

■  •••••• 

Come  buy  of  me,  come;  come  buy,  come  buy; 
Buy,  lads,  or  else  your  lasses  cry. 
Come  buy." 

As  an  instance  of  his  light-fingered  exploits  recall  the  scene 
in  which  the  Shepherd's  son  falls  a  victim  to  his  arts  (IV,  iii, 
38-121).  Evidently  the  exploits  of  Autolycus  are  prompted 
not  so  much  by  a  love  of  larceny  and  lucre  as  by  a  love  of 
fun  and  frolic;  and  I'm  afraid  it's  quite  hopeless  to  expect 
any  amendment  from  him.  When  at  last  he  stumbles  into 
good  luck,  and  sees  that  he  might  make  his  fortune  as  a 
courtier,  he  finds  that  he  has  still  too  strong  a  dash  of  the 
old  life  in  him  to  care  for  any  other  and  we  are  left  to  infer 
that  he  ends  his  career  in  the  profession  of  his  father, — "a 
snapper-up  of  unconsidered  trifles." 

All  the  exquisite  pastoral  beauty  of  this  Fourth  Act,  the 
homely  shepherd's  truth,  the  rustic  mirth,  and  song,  and 
dance,  and  flowers,  they  all  only  form  a  background  and  set- 
ting for  Perdita  who  moves  among  her  simple  flowers,  her- 
self the  sweetest  flower  of  all.  Perdita  is  quite  the  most 
charming  girl  I  ever  met — in  books.  No  wonder  Florizel 
is  in  love  with  her;  I'm  sure  I've  been  ever  since  I  was  about 


io8  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

his  age.  In  the  first  place,  she  is  so  fair.  No  one  sees  her 
without  some  sudden  word  of  admiration.  King  Polixenes, 
who  has  something  of  a  grudge  against  her  for  having  won 
the  heart  of  his  boy,  cannot  avoid  exclaiming,  "This  is  the 
prettiest  low-born  lass  that  ever  ran  on  the  green-sward." 
"Good  sooth,  she  is  the  queen  of  curds  and  cream,"  says  old 
Camillo;  "I  should  leave  grazing,  were  I  of  your  flock,  and 
only  live  by  gazing."  When  she  comes  to  Sicily,  the  gentle- 
man that  announces  her  arrival  can  hardly  keep  his  enthu- 
siasm within  bounds,  "Ay,  the  most  peerless  piece  of  earth, 
I  think,  that  e'er  the  sun  shone  bright  on."  And  King 
Leontes  himself  when  first  he  sees  her,  not  knowing  she  is 
his  daughter,  can  hardly  take  his  eyes  from  her  face. 

And  to  this  beauty  she  adds  a  natural  grace,  an  artless- 
ness,  a  delicacy  which  are  quite  bewitching.  It  is  as  if  the 
sweet  pastoral  beauties  of  nature  amid  which  she  has  grown 
up  had  somehow  embodied  themselves  in  her,  and  lent  to 
her  a  grace  to  mold  the  maiden's  form  by  silent  sympathy. 
So  that  Florizel's  praise  seems  no  lover's  flattery,  but  only 
an  involuntary  tribute  to  her  artless  charm  of  demeanor : 

What  you  do 
Still  betters  what  is  done.     When  you  speak,  sweet, 
I'd  have  you  do  it  ever;  when  you  sing, 
I'd  have  you  buy  and  sell  so,  so  give  alms, 
Pray  so;  and  for  the  ord'ring  your  affairs, 
To  sing  them  too.    When  you  do  dance,  I  wish  you 
A  wave  o'  the  sea,  that  you  might  ever  do 
Nothing  but  that;  move  still,  still  so, 
And  own  no  other  function.     Each  your  doing, 
So  singular  in  each  particular, 
Crowns  what  you  are  doing  in  the  present  deeds, 
That  all  your  acts  are  queens. 

She  is  but  a  girl  yet,  hardly  in  the  spring  of  womanhood; 
and  there  is  a  delightful  youth  and  freshness  in  all  she  says 
and  does.  She  accepts  the  love  of  Florizel  with  a  girlish 
pride  mixed  with  sweet  timidity.  And  in  truth  both  lovers 
are  so  young  and  innocent  that  at  the  first  word  of  endear- 
ment from  either,  the  true  blood  looks  out  at  the  cheeks  of 
both.    But  Perdita  is  her  mother's  own  daughter,  and  in  all 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  109 

her  young  gayety  there  is  a  certain  quietness  and  elegance 
which  give  an  added  charm  to  her  beauty.  'Nothing  she 
does  or  says  but  smacks  of  something  greater  than  herself.' 
Without  the  slightest  trace  of  affectation  or  prudery,  there  is 
yet  a  still  maidenly  dignity  of  manner  in  all  her  lightest  con- 
versation with  Florizel  which  is  indescribably  fascinating.  It 
is  this  which  makes  her  seem  to  Florizel  so  pure  and  high, 
and  puts  into  his  affection  that  tinge  of  reverence  which 
there  must  ever  be  in  any  worthy  love  of  man  for  woman. 
This  modest  dignity  much  becomes  her  when  she  presides  at 
the  sheep-shearing  festival.  She  blushes  to  see  herself  in  the 
fantastic  attire  in  which  she  has  been  prankt  up  for  the  oc- 
casion, and  timidly  shrinks  from  assuming  the  foremost 
place  in  the  rustic  company;  but  at  the  bidding  of  the  old 
Shepherd  she  takes  upon  herself  the  hostess-ship  of  the  day, 
and  welcomes  her  guests  with  a  quiet  grace  that  wins  our 
hearts  as  surely  as  it  did  Florizel's. 

And  then  how  perfectly  truthful  and  conscientious  she 
is.  The  dear  maid  cannot  abide  anything  that  reminds  her 
of  artifice  or  falsity.  You  remember  her  pretty  conceit  about 
her  flowers  (IV,  iv,  79  ff.).  She  cannot  follow  the  reason- 
ing of  Polixenes,  indeed  she  doesn't  try  to,  and  cuts  it  short 
by  courteously  assenting  to  his  conclusion;  but  she  is  of  the 
same  opinion  still.  However  you  may  argue  about  it  she 
knows  she  cannot  like  those  flowers  which  do  not  grow  as 
nature  meant  them  to,  and  she'll  not  put  dibble  in  the  earth 
to  set  one  slip  of  them.  She  loves  truth  and  hates  logic, — 
true  little  woman  that  she  is.  And  then  as  she  turns  to 
Florizel  and  her  other  younger  guests  who  are  not  strangers, 
her  shyness  vanishes,  and  she  gives  them  their  flowers  with 
such  dainty  words  of  poetry  as  add  new  beauty  and  new 
fragrance  to  her  gift,  and  show  how  delicate  is  the  imagina- 
tion and  how  exquisite  the  poetic  sense  of  the  fair  young 
giver : 

Now,  my  fair'st  friend, 
I  would  I  had  some  flowers  o'  the  spring  that  might 
Become  your  time  of  day;  and  yours,  and  yours, 


no  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

.  .  .  O  Proserpina, 
For  the  flowers  now,  that  frighted  thou  let'st  fall 
From  Dis's  waggon !  daffodils, 
That  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take 
The  winds  of  March  with  beauty ;  violets  dim, 
But  sweeter  than  the  lids  of  Juno's  eyes 
Or  Cytherea's  breath;  .  .  . 

.  .  .  bold  oxlips  and 
The  crown  imperial ;  lilies  of  all  kinds, 
The  flower-de-luce  being  one!     O,  these  I  lack. 
To  make  you  garlands  of,  and  my  sweet  friend, 
To  strew  him  o'er  and  o'er ! 

Nowhere  in  all  the  gardens  of  the  poets  will  you  find  a  fairer 
nosegay  than  that  or  a  sweeter  maid  to  pluck  it.  Did  you 
notice  that  line  about  the  violet?  I  do  not  believe  that  you 
can  find  anywhere  else  in  our  language  or  any  other  a  de- 
scription of  the  color  of  the  wood  violet — palest  blue  just 
passing  into  creamy  white — at  once  so  faithful  and  so 
daintily  poetic  as  that, — "Violets  dim,  but  sweeter  than  the 
lids  of  Juno's  eyes." 

And  when  King  Polixenes  throws  off  his  disguise,  and 
with  a  harshness  that  he  finds  it  rather  hard  to  assume  be- 
fore such  innocence  and  truth  commands  the  young  lovers  to 
separate  forever,  then  you  shall  see  that  this  girl  Perdita 
has  already  something  of  her  mother's  queenly  loftiness  of 
spirit,  her  mother's  unselfishness,  and  her  mother's  power 
of  still  and  patient  endurance: 

Even  here  undone! 
I  was  not  much  afeard;  for  once  or  twice 
I  was  about  to  speak,  and  tell  him  plainly 
The  self-same  sun  that  shines  upon  his  court 
Hides  not  his  visage  from  our  cottage,  but 
Looks  on  alike.     Will  't  please  you,  sir,  be  gone? 
I  told  you  what  would  come  of  this.     Beseech  you, 
Of  your  own  state  take  care.    This  dream  of  mine, — 
Being  now  awake,  I'll  queen  it  no  inch  farther, 
But  milk  my  ewes  and  weep. 

•  ••■•••a 

How  often  have  I  told  you  't  would  be  thus! 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  m 

How  often  said,  my  dignity  would  last 
But  'till  't  were  known! 

Young  Florizel,  whose  pure  and  chivalrous  love  for  Perdita 
has  made  a  man  of  him,  now  shows  in  his  emergency  of 
what  stuff  he  is  made,  and  takes  the  hand  of  Perdita  to  front 
their  adverse  fates  with  a  firm  and  calm  decision  worthy  the 
son  of  a  king.  "Lift  up  thy  looks,"  he  says  to  Perdita, 
and  then: 

From  my  succession  wipe  me,  father;  I 
Am  heir  to  my  affection. 

•  •••••• 

Cam.  This  is  desperate,  sir. 

Flo.     So  call  it;  but  it  does  fulfill  my  vow; 
I  needs  must  think  it  honesty.     Camillo, 
Not  for  Bohemia,  nor  the  pomp  that  may 
Be  thereat  gleaned,  for  all  the  sun  sees  or 
The  close  earth  wombs  or  the  profound  seas  hides 
In  unknown  fathoms,  will  I  break  my  oath 
To  this  my  fair  belov'd. 

Where  will  you  find  a  more  true  and  goodly  pair  of  young 
lovers  than  these?  Shakespeare  has  placed  them  amid  peace- 
ful scenes  of  beauty  and  innocence,  too  young  to  have  known 
as  yet  the  sorrows  and  the  hardships  of  the  world,  and  look- 
ing forward  with  steadfast  eye  to  all  the  trouble  before 
them,  calm  in  the  sense  of  mutual  love  and  faith.  I  always 
fancy  that  Shakespeare  dwelt  long  and  lovingly  over  this 
scene  when  he  wrote  it,  looking  backward  it  may  be  upon 
his  own  vanished  youth,  looking  it  may  be  with  a  father's 
tender  pride  upon  his  own  daughter  now  blooming  into 
womanhood,  and  feeling  deep  in  his  heart  a  yearning  sense 
of  that  young  love  and  purity  not  yet  brought  near  to  any 
great  sin  or  any  great  sorrow,  and  of  that  calm  young  con- 
fidence of  spirit  not  yet  buffeted  and  broken  by  the  smitings 
of  life.  Sure  I  am  that  no  man  can  set  in  his  imagination  that 
fair  picture  of  early  love  and  purity  without  finding  in  it 
forever  a  true  refection  of  soul. 

The  last  Act  of  this  Winter's  Tale   contains  only  the 
story  of  the  finding  of  the  lost  and  the  knitting  up  again  of 


ii2  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  ties  that  had  been  severed  so  long.  No  one  of  Shake- 
speare's plays,  I  think,  is  rounded  to  such  a  perfect  close,  so 
satisfying  all  our  most  generous  feelings  and  leaving  us  with 
a  long-drawn  breath  of  deep  and  glad  content.  It  is  as  if 
the  great  dramatist  would  end  his  last  work,  as  he  hoped 
to  end  his  life,  in  the  full  quiet  joy  of  home. 

Perdita  and  Florizel,  after  some  aid  from  that  good 
rogue  Autolycus,  and  a  variety  of  adventures  doubtless  quite 
possible  in  Bohemia,  reach  the  court  of  Sicily  and  throw 
themselves  upon  the  protection  of  King  Leontes.  Florizel's 
father,  King  Polixenes,  follows  hard  after  them,  and  arrives 
just  in  time  to  be  present  at  the  opening  by  the  old  Shepherd 
of  that  precious  fardel  which  contains  the  proof  that  Perdita 
verily  is  the  lost  daughter  of  Leontes  and  Hermione.  The 
father  takes  his  child  to  his  heart  with  fast-flowing  tears  in 
which  joy  of  the  present  and  sorrow  for  the  past  are 
strangely  mingled;  the  two  old  Kings,  who  have  not  seen 
each  other  since  that  dark  day  sixteen  years  before  when 
they  parted  in  suspicion  and  anger,  now  take  hands  again 
with  silent  tears  of  forgiveness  and  reconciliation,  blessing 
their  united  children,  while  they  think  with  full  hearts  upon 
that  queenly  mother  who  stood  with  them  when  last  they 
were  in  this  hall  together.  Shakespeare  does  not  show  us 
this  scene,  but  tells  us  the  story  of  it  by  a  third  person, 
chiefly,  I  suppose,  because  he  would  not  diminish  the  effect 
of  that  last  scene  of  all,  which  is  the  climax  of  the  play.  For 
Hermione  is  not  really  dead,  you  know.  All  this  time  she 
has  been  in  retirement,  in  a  removed  house  which  twice  or 
thrice  a  day  Paulina  hath  visited. 

I  believe  it  has  been  sometimes  objected  that  this  long 
seclusion  of  the  Queen  is  unnatural  or  unkind  to  Leontes. 
But  I  cannot  understand  it  thus.  What  else  could  she 
have  done?  For  the  difference  between  them  was  not  a 
passing  quarrel  to  be  made  up  to-morrow,  but  a  deep  and 
abiding  breach  of  trust.  To  a  high-souled  woman  like 
Hermione,  with  a  profound  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  her 
plighted  love  and  truth,  such  a  suspicion  as  that  of  Leontes 
was  an  immeasurable  wrong.     There  was  no  sullen  resent- 


THE  WINTER'S  TALE  113 

ment  nourished  in  her  heart  during  all  those  years;  but  that 
deep  wound  to  her  woman's  honor  could  not  be  speedily 
healed  by  any  easy  words  of  penitence  or  of  promise.  She 
could  bear  it  with  queenly  patience  if  she  might  be  alone, — 
but  that  was  all.  After  that  dreadful  experience  she  could 
not  easily  believe  that  her  husband's  trust  in  her  would 
ever  grow  firm  and  sound  again.  Her  love  for  him  she 
kept  true;  she  could  have  forgiven  him  in  his  penitence  and 
grief;  but  she  could  not  trust  him  again.  To  take  her 
place  by  his  side  once  more  in  the  old  scenes,  with  the  old 
cruel  memory  that  would  not  die,  with  the  ever-present 
dread  that  the  old  baseless  suspicion  might  still  be  rankling 
in  her  husband's  heart, — that  she  could  not  do  1 

And  she  would  never  have  done  't  had  it  not  been  for 
Perdita.  The  oracle  had  given  a  doubtful  hope  that  the  lost 
babe  might  sometime  be  found,  and  she  had  always  cher- 
ished that  shadowy  hope  as  the  one  possibility  of  future 
happiness.  And  now  that  Perdita  had  been  found  and 
restored  to  her  father,  now  that  her  husband  and  Polixenes 
had  embraced  again  in  forgiveness  of  the  past,  and  were 
looking  forward  to  the  wedding  of  their  children,  Hermione 
could  maintain  her  concealment  no  longer.  She  must  see 
her  child;  and  now,  surely,  over  that  daughter  the  father 
and  mother  can  forget  the  painful  past  and  knit  up  the  old 
love  in  perfect  truth.  Perdita  had  separated  them;  she 
alone  could  unite  them. 

And  so  the  two  Kings,  with  Perdita  and  Florizel,  have 
accompanied  Paulina  to  that  removed  house  to  see  the 
famous  statue  of  the  Queen  by  Giulio  Romano.  This  cen- 
tral device  of  the  last  scene  is  one  of  the  most  boldly  simple 
that  Shakespeare  ever  attempted,  and  only  with  such  a  calm, 
statuesque  character  as  Hermione  could  it  have  been  made 
possible.  As  it  is,  I  do  not  know  a  more  touching  or  a 
more  noble  scene.  It  is  very  impressive  on  the  stage;  yet 
there  is  nothing  forced  or  theatrical  about  it.  The  very 
surprise  and  wonder  of  it  seem  natural  and  fitting.  You 
remember  the  group:  Lcontes  full  of  bitter  sweet  memories 
and  deep  compunction  of  soul,  as  if  he  felt  himself  hardly 


ii4  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

worthy  to  see  even  the  statue  of  her  he  had  so  wronged; 
the  sympathizing  Polixenes;  fair  Perdita  herself  almost 
as  pale  as  marble,  speechless  in  wonder  and  veneration 
before  the  form  of  the  mother  she  has  never  known.  Words 
would  mar  the  perfect  joy  of  that  reunion;  and  Hermione 
speaks  not  one.  Only  when  Paulina  leads  Perdita  to  kneel 
with  trembling  joy  at  her  mother's  feet,  then  the  tears  of 
Hermione  gush  forth  and  she  breaks  her  long  silence : 

You  gods,  look  down 
And  from  your  sacred  vials  pour  your  graces 
Upon  my  daughter's  head !     Tell  me,  mine  own, 
Where  hast  thou  been  preserv'd?  where  liv'd? 

What  scene  could  we  better  choose  to  keep  in  our  recol- 
lection as  we  take  leave  of  Shakespeare  than  this  one,  very 
likely  the  last  he  ever  wrote.  Surely  it  is  not  idle  to  think 
that  such  passages  as  these  may  show  us  in  what  atmosphere 
of  quiet  domestic  love  and  content  Shakespeare  passed  his 
latest  days.  When  he  drew  the  noble,  the  injured,  the  for- 
giving Hermione,  surely  he  could  have  had  no  one  else  in 
his  thought  than  his  own  Anne  Hathaway.  It  would  take 
very  much  more  than  any  paltry  story  of  the  bequest  of  a 
second-best  bed  to  make  me  believe  that  the  afternoon  of 
this  man's  life  was  not  passed  in  the  sunshine  of  that  same 
affection  which  had  burst  upon  his  young  manhood  in  the 
days  of  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  more  than  a  score 
of  years  before;  which  had,  though  perhaps  sorely  tried, 
followed  him  with  benediction  in  all  his  darkest  days,  and 
embosomed  him  to  the  last. 

This  man's  knowledge  of  human  life  was  such  as  no 
other  poet  could  ever  boast;  the  range  of  character  his 
creative  imagination  has  made  to  live  before  us  is  marvel- 
ously  wide ;  but  I  like  to  think  that  this  our  greatest  poet, 
nay  I  make  bold  to  say  the  world's  greatest  poet,  however 
wide  the  circuit  of  his  work,  closed  it  at  last  with  loving 
pictures  of  those  pure  domestic  affections  that  consecrate 
the  names  of  wife  and  mother  and  bloom  fair  in  the  garden 
of  home. 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN 

I  HAVE  heard  somewhere  of  an  Irish  Member  on  the 
floor  of  the  House  of  Commons,  who,  after  wrestling 
some  time  rather  ineffectually  with  the  difficulties  of  his 
subject,  at  last  gave  it  up  in  despair,  exclaiming  as  he  sat 
down,  "Mr.  Speaker,  I  am  bothered  entirely  for  the  lack  of 
preliminary  information."  Any  one  who  ventures  to  speak 
upon  the  man  Shakespeare,  will  of  course  experience  some- 
thing of  the  same  difficulty.  We  have  no  biography  of 
the  man.  We  never  can  have.  All  the  certain  facts  of  his 
career  can  be  stated  in  two  or  three  sentences.  Nor  is  it 
easy,  we  are  told,  to  discover  in  the  great  array  of  char- 
acters he  has  drawn,  any  clear  outline  of  his  own  person- 
ality; we  are  thwarted  by  the  intensely  dramatic  char- 
acter of  his  genius.  Hamlet  and  Brutus  and  Antony;  Cor- 
delia and  Rosalind  and  Imogen  and  all  the  rest  of  the 
wonderful  company, — these  we  know;  but  Shakespeare  we 
have  never  heard  speak. 

So  true  is  this  that  some  very  competent  students  and 
lovers  of  Shakespeare  have  pronounced  the  effort  to  form 
any  clear  picture  of  his  personality  hopeless  and  futile. 
"Shakespeare,"  says  Browning,  "never  so  little  left  his 
bosom's  gate  ajar."     Says  Matthew  Arnold: 

Others  abide  our  question.     Thou  art  free. 
We  ask  and  ask — Thou  smilest  and  art  still. 

Sir  Sidney  Lee,  in  the  latest  edition  of  his  Life  of  Shake- 
speare, avers  that  "no  critical  test  has  yet  been  found 
whereby  to  disentangle  Shakespeare's  personal  feelings  or 
opinions  from  those  which  he  imputes  to  the  creatures  of 
his  dramatic  world." 

Yet  I  must  think  such  statements  are  exaggerated.     The 

"5 


u6  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

facts  we  know  of  Shakespeare's  life  are  certainly  meager; 
but  they  are  in  several  respects  very  significant.  And  are 
his  plays  so  dramatic  as  to  conceal  their  author  entirely? 
Can  anybody  conceive  it  possible  that  a  man  should  write 
over  thirty  great  plays  and  never  disclose  anything  of  his 
own  moral  and  emotional  nature,  his  cast  of  mind  and 
habits  of  observation?  Of  course  no  one  thinks  that  we 
can  read  in  any  of  Shakespeare's  plays  an  exact  transcript 
of  his  experience  or  of  any  phase  of  that  experience.  Every- 
thing is  modified,  transformed  by  his  imagination.  It  may 
be  difficult  to  find  in  his  dramas  his  particular  likes  and 
dislikes;  the  more  important  question  is,  what  sort  of  man 
must  he  have  been  who  could  make  us  acquainted  with  all 
this  world  of  men  and  women?  How  did  he  himself 
come  to  know  so  many?  Doubtless  the  picture  we  can  form 
of  Shakespeare's  personality  may  be  somewhat  lacking  in 
sharp,  well-defined  features;  so  is  the  picture  you  form  of 
half  of  the  men  you  know  on  the  street.  And  as  a  rule, 
the  more  full  and  well-rounded  a  nature,  the  more  diffi- 
cult is  it  to  analyze  and  depict.  We  incline  to  measure  men 
by  their  limitations  and  their  peculiarities.  Eccentricities 
and  prejudices  are  handy  pegs  on  which  to  hang  our  labels, 
and  a  crank  is  much  more  easily  imagined  than  a  sage.  But 
no  man  can  read  through  Shakespeare's  plays  without 
forming  at  least  some  conception  of  Shakespeare's  char- 
acter. He  knows  for  example,  as  Professor  Bradley  has 
said,  that  these  plays  could  not  have  been  written  by  such 
a  man  as  Milton  or  Shelley  or  Wordsworth,  and  I  am  ready 
to  add,  by  such  a  man  as  Bacon. 

I  wish  then  to  state  some  few  traits  of  the  man  William 
Shakespeare  which  I  think  we  may  all  see  in  his  life  or 
infer  from  his  work.  First,  consider  for  a  moment  the 
unquestioned  facts  of  his  life.  They  are  only  these.  He 
was  born  probably  on  April  23,  1564.  He  married,  after 
only  once  calling  of  the  banns,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  a 
woman  eight  years  his  senior;  after  his  marriage  he  went 
up  to  London.  How  long  after,  we  do  not  know.  One 
of  the  best  students  of  his  life  thinks  it  must  have  been 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  117 

as  early  as   1582.     Another  thinks  that  it  could  not  have 
been  earlier  than  1586.     What  he  went  to  London  for  we 
do  not  know,  or  what  he  did  when  he  got  there;  only  in 
1592,  when  he  had  been  in  London  six  to  ten  years,  do  we 
find  the  first  mention  of  him  as  a  playwright  whose  success 
was  provoking  the  jealousy  of  his  rivals.     From  that  time 
for  some  fifteen  years  his  plays  were  appearing  in  rapid 
succession:  a  casual  mention  by  a  minor  writer  shows  that 
by   1598  he  had  written  as  many  as  twelve.     Of  his  life 
during  those  London  years  we  know  only  one  thing, — we 
know  that  he  was  not  only  making  plays,  but  making  money 
and   investing  it  carefully   and  wisely.      By    1605    he   had 
purchased  real  estate  in  and  near  his  native  town  of  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon  to  the  value  of  920  pounds,  which  we  may 
estimate  as  equivalent  to  about  $60,000  nowadays,  and  he 
certainly    had    other    property    in    London    also.      Finally, 
somewhere  between   1608   to   161 1,  he  retired  from  Lon- 
don and  came  home  to  Stratford  to  spend  the  remainder  of 
his  days  in  the  goodly  house  which  he  had  purchased  as 
early  as   1597,  and  in  which  he  died  in  1616.     These  are 
all  the  facts  we  know  beyond  question;  you  can  put  them 
all  into  a  sentence.     He  married  at  eighteen  a  wife  who 
was  twenty-five  or  twenty-six;  at  about  twenty-one  went  up 
to  London;  in  the  course  of  the  next  twenty  years  achieved 
immortality  and  a  rent-roll;  at  thirty-four  bought  a  house 
and   corner   lot   in   his   native   village;   at   about    forty-five 
settled  down  there  to  reside;  at  fifty-two  died.     That  is  the 
whole  story. 

Of  course  a  great  body  of  tradition  has  collected  around 
these  facts, — that  the  young  Shakespeare  was  a  school- 
master, a  butcher,  that  he  went  up  to  London  because  of 
a  difficulty  over  a  deer-stealing  adventure  in  Sir  Thomas 
Lucy's  park,  that  he  held  horses  at  the  theater  door,  that 
he  played  the  part  of  the  ghost  in  Hamlet  and  did  not 
play  it  well,  that  he  was  lame,  that  the  Earl  of  Southampton 
gave  him  a  thousand  pounds  for  no  clearly  assigned  rea- 
son, that  he  died  of  a  fever  brought  on  by  drinking  too 
late  at  Stratford  one  night  with  his  old  friend  Ben  Jonson, 


n8  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  he  himself  composed  the  doggerel  verses  on  his  tomb- 
stone,— of  such  traditions  there  is  legion,  some  of  which 
may  be  true,  more  are  probably  false,  and  none  can  be 
certain.  Then  the  undoubted  facts  of  his  life  have  given 
rise  to  numerous  conjectures  equally  uncertain.  Because 
he  married,  apparently  with  some  haste,  a  woman  eight 
years  older  than  himself,  it  has  been  conjectured  that  the 
marriage  proved  an  unhappy  one,  though  there  is  not  a 
particle  of  evidence  that  it  did.  Then  Shakespeare  wrote 
a  most  interesting  series  of  sonnets  that  seem  to  be  auto- 
biographical; many  of  us  think  they  are  autobiographical, 
and  would  throw  a  great  deal  of  light  on  Shakespeare's 
London  life  if  we  could  only  agree  upon  any  interpretation 
of  them.  And  then  comes  Sir  Sidney  Lee  and  avers  that 
nothing  whatever  can  be  inferred  from  the  order  of  the 
sonnets,  and  that  most  of  them  have  very  slight  autobio- 
graphical value,  if  any  at  all. 

But  throwing  aside  all  tradition  and  doubtful  con- 
jecture, what  can  we  read  in  the  plain,  unquestioned  facts 
of  this  life?  Can  we  form  no  conception  of  the  eager  youth 
who,  refusing  to  measure  his  love  by  his  fortune,  makes  a 
perhaps  rash,  certainly  not  a  careful  and  prudent,  marriage; 
then,  when  the  children  come,  goes  up  to  London,  carry- 
ing nothing  of  experience  save  what  he  has  gained  in  the 
little  provincial  town  and  nothing  of  learning  save  the 
small  Latin  and  less  Greek  that  he  has  learned  in  the 
grammar  school  of  that  town;  toils  at  the  work  he  has 
chosen  from  four  to  seven  years  before  he  can  see  any 
one  of  his  plays  acted  upon  the  stage  and  his  great  career 
really  beginning?  For  you  know  there  was  nothing  really 
precocious  about  the  genius  of  Shakespeare.  Venus  and 
Adonis,  which  he  says  was  the  "first  heir  of  the  invention," 
was  not  published  until  1593,  when  he  was  twenty-nine  years 
old,  though  possibly  written  a  little  earlier.  Love's  Labour's 
Lost,  probably  the  first  play  written  entirely  by  him,  may 
be  dated  possibly  as  early  as  1591.  What  of  those  years 
of  apprenticeship  in  London?  How  comes  it  that  the 
youngster  who  at  twenty  or  twenty-one  is  holding  horses 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  119 

at  the  theater  door  or  playing  minor  parts  on  the  stage, 
at  twenty-eight  or  twenty-nine  is  writing  a  poem  that  he 
ventures  to  dedicate  to  the  Earl  of  Southampton  and  is  a 
dangerous  rival  to  the  foremost  playwrights  of  the  day? 
Grant  his  genius,  admit  that  he  must  have  had  by  nature 
marvelous  gifts  of  expression;  yet  such  a  record  proves 
a  great  intensity  of  nature  and  an  impassioned  interest  in 
human  life. 

But  his  London  life  surely  proves  also  that,  however 
intense  and  impassioned  his  temperament,  he  must  have 
had  it  under  control.  The  Shakespeare  of  the  London  years 
was  no  mere  Bohemian,  still  less  was  he,  like  Marlowe  and 
Greene  and  almost  all  his  fellow  playwrights,  a  reckless 
and  dissolute  man.  Nobody  claims  that  his  life  in  those 
years  can  be  proved  altogether  exemplary.  If,  as  seems 
to  me  probable,  the  sonnets  are  mostly  autobiographical, 
there  is  indication  in  some  of  them  of  an  episode  of  darker 
passion  which  for  a  time  overcame  his  conscience  and  his 
reason.  It  is  just  possible  that  some  of  the  stories  of  ir- 
regularities in  those  years  have  some  foundation,  though 
nothing  of  the  kind  rests  on  any  good  evidence.  On  the 
contrary,  the  only  bit  of  documentary  evidence  as  to  Shake- 
speare's private  life  in  London,  recently  discovered  by 
our  American  scholar,  Professor  Wallace,  proves  that,  for 
some  years  before  and  after  1604,  he  was  living  in  the  house 
of  one  Mountjoy,  a  Huguenot  refugee,  maker  of  ladies' 
head-dresses,  and  that  he  took  a  practical  and  kindly  in- 
terest in  the  domestic  affairs  of  that  family.  And  we  cer- 
tainly need  no  evidence  that  a  man  of  reckless  and  dis- 
solute life  could  not  have  written  two  or  three  plays  a 
year  for  twelve  or  fourteen  years,  plays  steadily  growing 
in  intellectual  power  ancj  moral  soundness  with  every  year. 
And  if  you  say  this  is  accounted  for  by  his  wonderful  genius, 
then  remember  the  bare  fact  I  have  mentioned,  that  all 
through  those  years  he  was  making  money, — not  spending 
it,  but  saving  it,  investing  it  shrewdly  and  collecting  his 
rents  and  income  \ery  rigorously.  This  is  the  one  thing 
in  his  career  about  which  there  can  be  no  doubt.     There 


120  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

are,  I  know,  people  who  find  it  difficult  to  associate  such 
thrift  with  the  highest  poetical  genius,  and  get  a  kind  of 
shock  at  knowing  that  Shakespeare  prosecuted  a  townsman 
for  a  debt  of  one  pound  ten  shillings'  worth  of  malt  while 
he  was  writing  Macbeth.  But  nothing  can  be  more  certain, 
I  think,  than  that  the  genius  of  the  man  William  Shake- 
speare had  a  foundation  of  solid  common  sense  and  business 
sagacity. 

One   other   thing   notice.      However  long  his   stay   in 
London,  however  many  the  attractions  and  distractions  of 
life  there,  he  always  considered  Stratford-on-Avon  his  home 
and  always  intended  to  return  there.    The  earliest  plays,  like 
Love's  Labour's  Lost,  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  and 
A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  are  full  of  reminiscences  of 
Stratford.     In  the  Midsummer  Night,  indeed,  you  may  say 
there  is  nothing  else;  and  the  latest  plays,  especially  The 
Winter's  Tale,  if  I  read  it  aright,  are  full  of  the  deep  and 
quiet  satisfaction  of  return  to  early  life   and  early  love. 
There  is  no  evidence,  then,  that  Shakespeare  had  forsaken 
or  forgotten  his  wife  and  children  at  home.     With  what 
was  probably  the  first  considerable  sum  of  money  he  could 
save  he  bought  for  them  in  1597  a  goodly  house  in  Strat- 
ford, and  the  following  years  proceeded  to  put  it  in  repair 
and  plant  an  orchard  about  it.     For  the  next  twelve  years 
he  would  seem  to  have  spent  annually  in  New  Place  and 
in  the  purchase  or  lease  of  real  estate  in  the  vicinity,  sums 
equivalent  to  nearly  four  thousand  dollars   a  year.     He 
was   not  indifferent  to   outward   tokens   of   rank,    and   as 
early  as  1599  succeeded  in  obtaining  the  grant  to  bear  a 
coat  of  arms,  for  which  his  father  had  applied  unsuccess- 
fully.   When  he  came  back  to  Stratford  about  16 10,  he  was 
probably  in  wealth  and  social  consideration  the  most  im- 
portant person  in  his  native  village. 

Now  I  wish  to  put  beside  these  facts,  which  may  seem 
to  indicate  a  nature  unattractively  mundane  and  practical, 
the  only  two  recorded  comments  made  upon  Shakespeare's 
nature  by  eye-witnesses  during  those  London  years.  A 
publisher  named  Chettle  says  he  is  sorry  for  having  printed 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  121 

some  months  before  depreciatory  remarks  with  reference 
to  Shakespeare's  works,  because  he  has  himself  since  come 
to  know  him  personally  and  seen  his  demeanor,  "no  less 
civil  than  he  is  excellent  in  the  quality  he  professes."  Be- 
sides, he  adds,  other  people  have  reported  "his  uprightness 
of  dealing  which  argues  his  honesty."  Honesty,  you 
know,  meant  more  then  than  at  present.  It  meant  honor, 
courtesy.  And  Ben  Jonson,  who  knew  him  well,  declared, 
"I  loved  the  man  and  do  honor  his  memory  on  this  side 
idolatry  as  much  as  any.  He  was  indeed  honest,  and  of  an 
open  and  free  nature."  And  in  Jonson's  lines  on  the  folio 
portrait  he  says,  you  remember, 

This  figure  that  thou  here  seest  put, 
It  was  for  gentle  Shakespeare  cut. 

That  epithet  "gentle"  seems  to  have  been  often  applied  to 
Shakespeare  in  later  years.  Doubtless  it  has  a  wide  and 
vague  meaning,  but  it  always  implies  at  least  something 
of  courtesy  and  affability.  Men  never  spoke  of  gentle 
Marlowe,  or  even,  I  should  say,  of  gentle  John  Milton. 
Such  testimonies,  meager  as  they  are,  certainly  give  us 
some  hints  of  the  temperament  which  one  thinks  made 
friends  for  Shakespeare  in  those  London  years  among  all 
sorts  of  people,  from  the  brilliant  young  Earl  of  Southamp- 
ton to  the  plain  Huguenot  "tire-maker,"  Mountjoy,  in 
whose  house  he  lived. 

And  now  this  picture  of  the  man  Shakespeare  that  we 
form  from  the  meager  facts  of  his  life  is  confirmed,  I 
believe,  by  the  inferences  we  draw  from  the  dramas.  In 
the  first  place  the  range  and  variety  of  the  persons  in  those 
dramas  is  proof  of  the  openness  and  geniality  of  Shake- 
speare's temper  as  a  man.  How  did  he  come  to  create 
so  many  different  men  and  women, — some  seven  hundred  of 
them?  I  say  create;  but  strictly  speaking  the  imagination 
never  does  create.  It  only  expands,  transforms,  and  com- 
bines the  elements  of  experience  into  new  wholes.  Shake- 
speare in  some  sense  must  have  known  something  of  all 
those  people,  and  he  could  not  have  known  them  if  he  had 


122  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

not  been  a  companionable  man  who  liked  people  and  was 
liked  by  them.  Your  great  dramatist  can  never  be  a  lofty, 
isolated  man  like  Milton,  or  a  visionary  idealist  like 
Shelley,  or  a  misanthrope  like  Swift,  or  a  philosopher  like 
Coleridge,  or  a  retired  and  solitary  thinker  like  Words- 
worth. These  men  may  know  something  of  Avhat  they  call 
human  nature,  as  they  learn  it  by  introspection  and  re- 
flection, but  they  do  not  know  men  and  women,  they  do  not 
know  life.  They  have  each  only  a  narrow  circle  of  friends. 
But  for  Shakespeare  the  world  was  full  of  interesting  folk. 
Of  narrative  invention  he  had  comparatively  little;  the 
plots  of  his  plays,  as  everybody  knows,  are  all  borrowed, 
and  sometimes  not  very  well  borrowed,  put  together  in 
hasty,  impossible  fashion.  But  the  characters  are  always 
vital — real  men  and  women.  You  feel  sure  that  Shake- 
speare has  known  them.  He  was  not,  I  suppose,  a  reader 
of  many  books;  Holinshed's  Chronicles  for  English  history, 
and  Plutarch's  Lives  for  the  classical  world  seem  to  have 
sufficed  him.  But  the  characters  whom  he  found  in  books 
lived  in  his  imagination  as  really  as  those  that  had  entered 
there  through  his  marvelous  observation. 

Indeed,  observation  is  hardly  the  word  to  describe  the 
method  of  Shakespeare's  acquaintance  with  men  and  things. 
It  implies  too  passive  a  relation.  His  observation  proper 
was  indeed  marvelously  exact,  his  eye  marvelously  acute. 
He  saw  common  things,  for  example,  as  you  and  I  do  not. 
Do  you  know  what  is  the  most  characteristic  thing  about 
a  violet?  That  it  is  modest  or  humble?  Anybody  knows 
that.  That  it  is  blue?  Thousands  of  flowers  are  blue, — 
though,  if  Shakespeare  wished  to  mention  its  color  he 
would  be  likely  to  specify  in  some  poetic  way  the  shade  of 
blue,  as  of  the  pale  wood  violet,  of  which  he  says  it  is 
sweeter  than  the  lids  of  Juno's  eyes.  But  Shakespeare 
noticed  that  the  most  characteristic  thing  about  a  violet  is 
that  it  has  a  habit  of  gently  nodding  on  its  stem, 

Where  oxslips  and  the  nodding  violet  grows. 

Or,  again, 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  123 

As  gentle 
As  zephyrs  blowing  below  the  violet, 
Not  wagging  his  sweet  head. 

Did  you  ever  notice  that?  Do  you  know  just  how  many 
s>pots  there  are  in  the  bottom  of  a  cowslip?  Shakespeare 
did: 

On  her  left  breast 
A    mole    cinque-spotted    like    the    crimson    drops 
I'  the  bottom  of  a  cowslip. 

Scores  of  examples  of  this  nicety  of  vision  might  be  cited 
if  I  were  talking  of  Shakespeare's  poetry,  but  what  I  am 
now  insisting  is  that  his  larger  observation  of  men  and 
things  was  always  active.  It  not  only  sees,  it  interprets 
what  he  sees.  Shakespeare's  temperament,  we  feel  sure, 
was  always  alert  and  eager.  He  lived  with  men,  he  knew 
men,  was  spontaneously  interested  in  and  sympathized  with 
them. 

Consider  his  humor,  for  a  man's  humor  is  generally  a 
pretty  good  test  of  his  attitude  towards  his  fellow  men 
and  his  enjoyment  of  life.  What  a  genial  and  kindly  humor 
it  is.  He  does  not  care  much  for  loud  and  empty  mirth; 
there  is  not  in  his  plays  much  of  that  laughter  that  is  like 
the  crackling  of  thorns  under  a  pot.  His  best  comedies, 
like  As  You  Like  It,  seem  an  expression  of  the  full,  healthy 
joyousness  of  living.  But  while  his  humor  of  course  usually 
plays  about  some  of  the  manifold  contrasts  and  inconsist- 
encies of  this  varied  life  of  ours,  his  humorous  people 
are  never  mere  eccentrics  or  freaks;  they  all  belong  to  our 
family.  We  must  own  them  as  men  and  brothers.  There 
are  in  the  company,  for  example,  a  good  many  of  those 
people  whom  we,  when  we  see  them  in  real  life,  are  apt  to 
classify  complacently  as  stupid  people, — Mrs.  Quickly,  Dog- 
berry, Verges,  Bardolph,  Shallow,  Slender,  and  all  the  rest. 
Yet  Shakespeare  never  assumes  any  air  of  superiority  to 
them.  He  vastly  enjoys  their  company,  and,  what  is  more 
to  the  point,  you  are  sure  they  enjoyed  his.  Often  his 
humor  is  so  touched  with  kindly  human  sympathy  that  it 


I24  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

seems  to  shade  imperceptibly  into  pathos.  You  remember 
old  Justice  Shallow's  reminiscences  with  Cousin  Silence, 
"Jesu,  Jesu,  the  mad  days  that  I  have  spent !  And  to  see 
how  many  of  my  old  acquaintances  are  dead!"  "We  shall 
all  follow,"  says  Silence.  "Certain,  'tis  certain;  very  sure, 
very  sure.  Death,  as  the  Psalmist  saith,  is  certain  to  all ; 
all  shall  die.  How  a  good  yoke  of  bullocks  at  Stam- 
ford fair?"  And  everybody  remembers  Mrs.  Quickly's 
account  of  the  last  moments  of  Jack  Falstaff.  "After  I  saw 
him  fumble  with  the  sheets  and  play  with  flowers,  and  smile 
upon  his  fingers'  ends,  I  knew  there  was  but  one  way; 
for  his  nose  was  as  sharp  as  a  pen,  and  a'  babbled  of  green 
fields." 

Not  that  Shakespeare's  humor  never  has  a  satiric  qual- 
ity, but  he  generally  reserves  his  satire  for  those  people 
who  are  somehow  hollow,  who  assume  an  inflated  dignity 
or  bigness, — Bottom,  old  Polonius,  Malvolio,  ancient  Pis- 
tol, and  their  like.  These  people  he  laughs  at,  rather  than 
laughs  with.  What  Carlyle  somewhere  calls  "pretentious 
ineptitude,"  was  evidently  very  amusing  to  Shakespeare, 
but  also  somewhat  annoying.  Yet  even  here  his  humor  is 
not  bitter  or  cynical.  The  generally  cynical  temper  seemed 
a  tragic  thing  to  Shakespeare, — as  you  can  see  in  his 
Timon, — a  thing  to  be  pitied  or  feared. 

Are  there  then  no  types  of  character  that  this  man 
really  hated?  Well,  not  many;  the  man  who  really  knows 
men  and  women  as  Shakespeare  did,  will  find  something 
to  touch  his  sympathy  in  almost  every  life.  "Hate  that 
man,"  said  Charles  Lamb  once,  "how  could  I  hate  him? 
Don't  I  know  him?"  Yet  there  were  men  whom  Shake- 
speare I  think  regarded  with  unmixed  aversion,  almost 
hatred.  Who  is  the  worst  man  in  Shakespeare's  world? 
Everybody  will  say  without  much  hesitation,  Iago.  Why? 
Because  Iago  is  the  embodiment  of  absolute  selfishness. 
Envy  and  the  love  of  personal  power  make  him  blind  to 
innocence  and  contemptuous  of  virtue.  A  hard,  deceitful, 
scheming,  merciless  man.  Goneril  and  Regan,  in  Lear, 
belong  to  the  same  class.     Now  a  nature  like  Shakespeare's, 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  125 

open  and  free,  as  Ben  Jonson  called  it,  finds  such  characters 
as  these  intolerable. 

Do  we  find  any  confirmation  in  the  dramas  for  that 
practical  wisdom,  that  power  of  self-control  which  seems 
so  certain  in  the  meager  records  of  Shakespeare's  London 
life?  I  think  we  can.  I  find  that  in  Shakespeare's  world 
it  is  just  this  practical  wisdom,  this  poise  and  self-control 
that  insures  success  and  consideration.  Says  Hamlet  to 
I  loratio, — 

Blest  are  those 
Whose  blood  and  judgement  are  so  well  commingled 
That  they  are  not  a  pipe  for  Fortune's  finger 
To  sound  what  stop  she  please.     Give  me  that  man 
That  is  not  passion's  slave,  and  I  will  wear  him 
In  my  heart's  core,  ay,  in  my  heart  of  heart. 
As  I  do  thee. 

Now  this  type  of  man,  strong  but  well-balanced,  self- 
controlled,  cannot  be  the  hero  of  tragedy  and  not  often  of 
comedy,  and  so  we  shall  not  expect  to  find  many  examples 
of  the  type  in  Shakespeare's  plays.  Yet  there  are  such 
men,  and  they  always  in  some  way  seem  to  have  Shake- 
speare's approval  and  admiration.  Horatio  himself  is  an 
example,  and  Theseus  in  A  Midsummer  iSight's  Dream, 
and  the  banished  Duke  in  As  You  Like  It,  and  best  of  all, 
Henry  the  Fifth.  It  has  been  often  said  that  Henry 
the  Fifth  was  Shakespeare's  favorite  hero;  and  there  is 
some  reason  to  think  so.  He  has  drawn  out  his  story 
as  Prince  and  King  through  three  plays,  and  in  the  choruses 
of  Henry  V ,  speaking  tor  once  as  if  in  his  own  person,  has 
given  him  such  enthusiastic  praise  that  it  seems  probable 
we  have  in  Henry  a  type  of  character  Shakespeare  himself 
admired.  Now  Henry,  while  he  is  Prince  Hal,  cares  little 
for  decorum  and  throws  himself  heartily  enough  into  the 
humors  of  Falstatf  and  of  the  Boar's  Head.  Vet  in  his 
wildest  days  he  never  (juite  forgets  his  duty;  and  when  the 
call  for  manly  action  comes,  he  is  ready,  throws  off — 
perhaps  rather  too  cruelly — Falstaff  and  his  roistering  com- 
panions and  takes  up  the  duties  of  kingship.     Yet  he  keeps 


126  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

always  a  certain  boyish  exuberance  of  spirits,  he  likes  all 
sorts  of  people  and,  though  king,  is  still  a  good  fellow. 
But  he  never  loses  mastery  of  himself,  he  never  makes  mis- 
takes, he  is  never  impatient,  he  never  gets  angry.  I  think 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  William  Shakespeare  in  this  King 
Harry  the  Fifth. 

And  if  this  poise  and  self-control  is  a  condition  of  suc- 
cess, the  lack  of  it  means  failure — often  tragic  failure.  In 
the  great  tragedies  of  Shakespeare  you  will  find  that  the 
catastrophe  comes  either  from  a  lack  of  passion  as  motive 
power  or  from  a  failure  to  direct  and  control  such  pas- 
sion. Characters  as  unlike  as  Hamlet  and  Mark  Antony 
both  go  down  because  their  blood  and  judgment  are  not 
well  commingled. 

But  you  will  ask,  is  this  all  we  know  of  the  man  Shake- 
speare, this  energetic,  facile,  kindly,  marvelously  observant, 
but  rather  mundane  man  that  we  see  in  the  meager  records 
of  his  life?  Hardly.  The  deepest  things  in  any  man's 
thinking  and  feeling,  certainly  in  any  poet's  thought  and 
feeling,  are  not  seen  in  the  story  of  his  outward  business  and 
affairs.  Yet  up  to  about  1600,  when  Shakespeare  was,  you 
remember,  thirty-six  years  of  age,  this  is  the  type  of  man 
seen  in  his  work.  For,  with  the  exception  of  the  young 
man's  romantic  tragedy  of  love  and  death,  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  the  work  is  all  comedy,  dealing  mostly  with  the 
lighter  and  more  joyous  sides  of  life,  or  history,  in  which 
the  fate  of  the  individual  is  involved  in  the  great  sweep  of 
national  affairs.  Shakespeare,  one  thinks,  as  yet  has  not 
much  considered  the  deeper  and  darker  problems  of  life. 
But  then  suddenly  his  work  changes.  The  comedy  darkens 
in  Measure  for  Measure  and  All's  Well,  and  then  for  some 
five  or  six  years  he  writes  tragedy  and  nothing  but  tragedy. 
Why  this  change  in  the  temper  of  his  work  we  do  not  know, 
but  of  one  thing  we  may  be  quite  sure;  it  was  no  good  easy 
man,  altogether  unstirred  by  stronger  passions  and  un- 
vexed  by  obstinate  questions,  that  wrote  that  great  series 
of  tragedies,  Hamlet,  Othello,  Macbeth,  Lear,  Antony, 
Timon.    There  are  some  indications,  especially  in  the  son- 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  127 

nets,  of  some  emotional  agitation  in  Shakespeare's  private 
life  about  that  time.  But  setting  aside  all  mere  conjecture, 
it  is  certainly  not  improbable  that  something  in  the  intimate 
personal  experience  of  Shakespeare  during  those  years  may 
have  forced  his  thought  upon  the  great  problems  of  sin  and 
suffering.  I  have  often  thought  it  strange  and  perhaps 
significant  that  the  line  of  tragedies  begins  with  Hamlet, 
the  only  play  in  which  the  tragedy  is  not  external  but 
internal,  the  tragedy  of  doubt  and  skepticism  that  puzzles 
the  will  and  benumbs  all  our  active  faculties.  It  is  as  if 
at  the  outset  of  this  tragic  period  Shakespeare  was  dwelling 
in  thought  not  so  much  upon  the  external  pain  and  sorrow 
in  this  unintelligible  world,  as  upon  the  meaning  and  mystery 
of  it  all.  No  other  play  is  so  full  of  spiritual  doubt  and 
wonder;  no  other  play  suggests  so  many  of  those  problems 
for  which  every  thoughtful  man  sometimes  yearns  to  find 
solution;  no  other  play  is  so  enfolded  in  an  atmosphere  of 
the  supernatural.  And  in  all  the  later  tragedies  the  interest 
is  primarily  ethical,  not  external;  the  catastrophe  is  never 
merely  physical  or  melodramatic.  These  tragedies  are 
so  supremely  great  not  because  of  any  thrilling  dramatic 
situation  or  harrowing  exhibition  of  passion,  but  because 
of  their  absolute  truth  to  the  deepest  and  most  solemn  laws 
of  our  human  nature.  Nowhere  has  Shakespeare  so  clearly 
shown  the  sternness  and  sanity  of  his  moral  judgments. 
Sometimes,  as  in  Macbeth  or  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  he 
shows  us  the  inevitable  ruin  that  follows  unbridled  pas- 
sion, whether  of  ambition  or  of  lust.  These  plays  are  not 
didactic  in  purpose.  Shakespeare  is  no  preacher.  He  is 
simply  holding  the  mirror  up  to  nature.  And  he  has 
none  of  that  cheap  morality  that  is  afraid  to  tell  the 
truth.  In  the  play  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  for  example, — 
one  of  the  most  powerful  of  his  works, — he  knows  that 
Antony  did  not  lose  the  world  for  nothing.  He  knows 
that  the  pleasures  of  sin,  though  they  be  but  for  a  season, 
are  very  real  pleasures  while  they  last.  And  he  makes  us 
sec  it  too.  As  we  read,  something  o\  the  magic  of  this 
great  <]ueen   of   the   world    tails   over   us.      We   understand 


128  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  enchantment  that  is  upon  Antony,  and  when  we  under- 
stand that  we  cannot  stand  aloof  in  cool  indifference  and. 
condemn  him.  Yet  all  this  dazzle  of  the  lust  of  the  eyes  and 
the  pride  of  life  does  not  for  a  moment  blind  us  to  the 
quality  of  Antony's  action,  and  the  inevitable  doom  which 
he  is  every  moment  nearing.  Precisely  there  resides  the 
tragedy.  We  see  his  manhood  ebbing  away,  his  iron  reso- 
lution growing  soft  and  pliant,  and  "his  captain's  heart, 
which  in  the  scuffles  of  great  fights"  had  "burst  the  buckles 
on  his  breast,"  losing  its  soldier's  temper,  and,  warmed  no 
longer  by  any  chaste  or  temperate  affection,  bursting  at 
last  in  shame  and  despair.  There  could  be  no  higher  proof 
of  Shakespeare's  moral  steadiness  of  vision  and  self-com- 
mand than  his  power  to  depict  with  even-handed  justice  at 
once  the  charms  and  the  results  of  sin. 

In  the  other  type  of  tragedy,  like  Othello  and  Lear, 
we  have  that  spectacle  more  awful  because  more  unin- 
telligible, of  the  triumph  of  guilt  and  hatred  over  inno- 
cence and  nobility.  Such  plays  leave  us  dazed  in  wonder 
and  pity;  yet  feeling  through  all  confusion  and  agony 
of  soul  that  purity  and  truth  are  supremely  beautiful  things, 
better  than  happiness,  better  than  life.  Who  would  not 
rather  die  as  Desdemona  than  live  as  Iago?  In  Lear  it  is 
the  old,  gray-haired  King,  the  generous  Kent,  and  the 
heavenly  Cordelia  that  go  down  before  the  awful  storm  of 
wrong;  but,  as  the  dying  King  bends,  blind  and  crazed, 
over  the  lifeless  body  of  his  daughter  and  moans,  "Cordelia, 
Cordelia,  stay  a  little,"  who  does  not  feel  that  in  all  the 
defeats  and  contradictions  of  this  unintelligible  world  the 
only  thing  of  priceless  value  is  a  pure  and  heroic  life? 

This  great  series  of  tragedies  certainly  proves  that  the 
deeper  and  darker  phases  of  human  life  were  passing 
through  the  study  of  Shakespeare's  imagination  in  the  years 
from  1600  to  1606,  but  I  do  not  see  that  they  present  any- 
thing really  inconsistent  with  the  conception  of  Shake- 
speare's character  that  we  form  from  the  record  of  those 
years  or  from  a  study  of  his  earlier  work.  They  enlarge  and 
deepen  that  conception;  they  do  not  contradict  it.     Nay,  in 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  129 

one  respect  they  confirm  it,  for,  if  I  mistake  not,  there  is 
indication  even  in  these  tragedies  of  that  breadth  of  sym- 
pathy, that  sense  of  fellowship  with  all  men,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  obvious  traits  of  the  man.  An  unflinching  recog- 
nition of  the  strictest  moral  laws  is  not  inconsistent  with 
a  pity  for  the  victims  of  their  violation.  Consider  Shake- 
speare's bad  men  and  women.  For  only  two  or  three, 
as  I  have  said,  has  he  an  unmixed  hatred,  but  Macbeth 
and  Lady  Macbeth,  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  the  King  in 
Hamlet,  Shylock,  and  all  the  rest,  it  is  only  with  some  touch 
of  charity  for  them  and  pity  for  their  sin  and  ruin  that  we 
leave  them  at  the  last.  It  was  in  this  large,  hopeful,  and 
kindly  temper,  surely  befitting  the  greatest  of  dramatists, 
that  Shakespeare  looked  out  upon  this  world. 

I  think  one  is  glad  to  know  that  this  tragic  mood  was 
not  dominant  in  the  latest  work  or  the  latest  years  of 
Shakespeare's  life.  After  about  twenty  years'  connection 
with  the  stage  in  London,  the  purpose  we  think  he  had 
cherished  during  all  those  years  was  fulfilled  and  Shake- 
speare came  home  to  Stratford-on-Avon.  Sir  Sidney  Lee 
thinks  it  was  in  1 6 1 1 .  Some  students  think  it  may  have  been 
a  year  or  two  before  that.  In  fact,  his  return  was  probably 
gradual,  his  visits  to  Stratford  growing  more  frequent  as 
he  gradually  gave  up  his  connection  with  the  theater  in 
London;  and  by  161 1  we  may  believe  he  was  settled  for  the 
rest  of  his  life  in  New  Place  with  his  wife  and  daughters. 
Now  it  was  pretty  certainly  in  the  year  1610-11  that  Shake- 
speare wrote  the  three  plays  I  think  we  love  best  of  all, — 
Cymbeline,  The  Winte?  s  Tale,  and  The  Tempest.  These 
plays  are  not  tragedies,  nor  are  they  exactly  comedies  either. 
They  are  plays  of  rest  after  struggle,  of  reconciliation  after 
suspicion,  of  home  and  finality.  In  two  of  them — Cym- 
beline and  The  Winter's  Tale — the  central  character  is  a 
wife,  cruelly  suspected  by  her  husband  but  winning  back  at 
last  by  unwavering  fidelity  the  trust  that  has  always  been 
deserved.  Imogen  and  Hermione  are  the  crown  of  woman- 
hood in  Shakespeare's  world.  Then  these  three  plays  pic- 
ture, as  never  before  in  Shakespeare's  pages,  the  coy  and 


130  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

gentle  charm  of  girlhood,  not  now  with  the  rapture  of  the 
lover,  but  with  the  wise  and  tender  solicitude  of  a  father; 
it  is  not  Romeo  and  Juliet,  but  Prospero  and  Miranda, 
Leontes  and  Perdita.  And,  furthermore,  these  plays  are 
redolent  of  the  charm  of  country  life,  of  green  fields  and 
gardens  and  flowers.  We  are  in  the  country  again,  as  in  the 
days  of  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  and  Perdita's  gar- 
den is  even  lovelier  than  the  bank  whereon  sometime  Ti- 
tania  slept.  The  plays  are  as  wise  as  ever;  and  Shake- 
speare's grasp  of  character  as  firm,  and  his  sense  of  beauty  I 
think  deeper  than  in  the  earlier  plays;  but  the  glow  of  pas- 
sion is  cooled  and  all  three  plays,  whatever  the  suspicion  or 
harshness  in  the  earlier  Acts,  all  end  as  with  a  deep  and 
long-drawn  breath  of  quiet  content. 

Now  I  am  well  aware  of  the  folly  of  trying  to  find  in 
Shakespeare's  plays  any  close  transcript  of  the  events  of  his 
personal  career;  yet  no  one  can  convince  me  that  the  general 
tone  of  all  these  last  plays  is  not  that  of  Shakespeare's  re- 
newed family  life  at  Stratford-on-Avon.  I  find  no  sure  evi- 
dence that  there  was  ever  any  estrangement  or  jealousy  be- 
tween Shakespeare  and  his  wife  during  his  long  years  in 
London;  but  if  there  had  been,  I  am  sure  it  was  over  by 
1610.  That  such  a  play  as  The  Winter's  Tale  could  have 
been  written  in  that  society  which  the  experience  of  Solomon 
pronounces  worse  than  "a  continual  dropping  in  a  very 
rainy  day," — that  would  be  stranger  than  any  miracle.  No, 
I  feel  sure  that  the  record  of  those  latest  years,  as  inter- 
preted by  these  plays,  may  make  us  certain  that  Shakespeare, 
like  Wordworth's  Happy  Warrior,  was  after  all,  certainly 
in  these  later  years, 

a  Soul  whose  master-bias  leans 
To  homefelt  pleasures  and  to  gentle  scenes, 

and  that  however  wide  the  circuit  of  his  work,  he  closes  it 
at  last  with  pictures  of  those  affections  that  bloom  fair  in 
the  garden  of  home. 

The  image  we  can  thus  form  of  the  man  must  at  best  be 
somewhat  vague,  lacking  in  those  specific  and  picturesque 


SHAKESPEARE  THE  MAN  131 

features  in  which  character  is  most  easily  read;  but  I  think 
we  can  be  sure  of  its  main  outlines, — a  positive,  well-bal- 
anced man,  of  strong  passions  under  firm  control,  genial  and 
interested  in  all  sorts  of  people,  with  marvelous  powers  of 
observation  and  an  imagination  to  interpret  all  he  saw  into 
lasting  forms  of  life  and  beauty.  And  I  think,  one's  concep- 
tion of  Shakespeare's  character  loses  something  of  breadth 
and  truth  when  we  try  to  separate  the  man  from  the  poet, 
as  I  have  half  unconsciously  been  doing.  For  we  tend  to 
forget  that  there  were  not  two  Shakespeares.  The  poet 
who  ruled  a  vast  demesne  on  the  heights  of  Parnassus  was 
the  same  man  who  owned  a  house  and  corner  lot  in  Strat- 
ford-on-Avon.  The  dramatist  whose  speech  delights  us 
by  an  affluence  of  power  and  beauty  such  as  none  of  his 
contemporaries  could  approach,  is  the  same  man  who  could 
lean  over  the  gate  of  New  Place  of  a  morning  to  jest  with 
Dogberry  or  chat  with  Goodman  Verges.  And  in  opposi- 
tion to  all  that  has  been  said  about  the  impossibility  of 
knowing  anything  of  William  Shakespeare,  I  must  say  that 
I  think  one  rises  from  a  study  of  his  life  and  work  with 
something  like  a  sense  of  personal  acquaintance  with  the 
man.  One  feels  at  least  as  old  Ben  Jonson  said,  that  he 
was  honest  and  of  an  open  and  free  nature,  a  man  to  know. 
One  other  question  there  is,  which  on  this  day1  we  cannot 
forbear  to  ask.  Was  Shakespeare  a  religious  man?  We  get 
no  answer  from  the  recorded  facts  of  his  life.  The  tradition 
that  he  disliked  the  Puritans,  based  mostly  on  a  misinter- 
pretation of  some  one  or  two  pages  in  Twelfth  Night  and 
All's  If  ell,  and  the  tradition  that  he  died  a  Roman  Catholic, 
first  heard  of  a  hundred  years  after  his  death  in  the  talk  of 
a  gossipy  clergyman,  are  both  valueless.  I  think  the  answer 
to  the  question  must  depend  on  the  meaning  we  give  to  the 
question  itself.  If  religion  be  only,  as  Matthew  Arnold  once 
defined  it,  morality  touched  with  emotion, — then  we  may 
perhaps  venture  to  call  Shakespeare  a  religious  man.  He 
certainly  recognized  the  nature  and  the  imperative  demands 

rhi»  paper   was  first  delivered   as  an   address   in  celebration   of  the   ter- 
centenary of  Shakespeare's  death.     [L.  B.  G.] 


i32  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  morality;  he  saw  that  the  highest  values  in  life  are  always 
moral  values.  We  may  be  sure  also  that  he  was  a  reverent 
man.  We  shall  find  in  his  plays  no  flippant  or  contemptuous 
references  to  religious  belief  or  practice,  save  on  the  lips  of 
men  who  were  themselves  shallow  or  base.  More  than  this, 
there  is  evidence  enough  in  such  plays  as  Hamlet  that 
Shakespeare  had  pondered  the  meanings  and  the  mystery 
of  life.  He  could  have  been  no  stranger  to  those  thoughts 
that  are  beyond  the  reaches  of  our  souls.  What  solutions  he 
ever  reached  for  those  deepest  problems  that  vex  the  think- 
ing soul,  we  do  not  know;  it  seems  to  me  likely  that  he  put 
them  aside  as  insoluble,  and  in  his  later  years  sought  quiet 
and  content  within  the  realm  of  positive  knowledge.  We 
may  well  be  slow  in  pronouncing  upon  any  man's  religion; 
that  is  a  matter  between  himself  and  his  God.  But  we  may 
not  uncharitably  say  that  in  reading  Shakespeare's  pages  we 
long  for  one  thing,  and  for  one  thing  only.  With  this  all- 
embracing  knowledge  that  seems  to  include  almost  the 
whole  realm  of  human  nature,  could  we  but  have  a  little 
faith.  If  the  vision  that  saw  so  clearly  and  justly  all  the 
facts  of  human  life  could  have  had  some  faith  in  things  un- 
seen. Surely  of  such  faith  the  saintly  Cordelia,  the  noble 
Hermione,  the  gentle  Desdemona,  the  Hamlet  of  Luther's 
Wittenberg  might  have  known  something.  But  among  the 
very  latest  words  of  the  great  magician  who  created  them  all 
are  these,  which  sound  with  a  solemn  pathos  down  the  cen- 
turies,— 

We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep. 

He  was  true  to  the  facts  of  knowledge  only.  He  showed  the 
human  soul  as  it  is;  he  carried  it  through  all  the  tangled  web 
of  circumstance,  the  struggles  of  good  and  evil,  the  joys  and 
pains  that  make  up  this  life  of  ours  here,  quite  down  to  the 
moment  when  the  fevered  play  is  quite  played  out;  "the 
rest  is  silence."  We  need  one  other  book  beside  our  Shake- 
speare; we  need  our  Bible. 


THE  LITERATURE  OF  THE  AGE  OF 
QUEEN  ANNE 

I 

CHARACTERISTICS  OF  THE   AGE 

THE  group  of  men  of  letters  whose  life  and  work  form 
for  us  the  center  of  interest  during  the  period  from 
1700  to  1750  were  all  at  work,  and  most  of  them 
were  doing  their  best  work,  during  the  reign  of  Anne  ( 1702— 
1  7  14)  ;  but  all  of  them  outlived  her.  Addison  was  tirst  to 
go,  in  1 7 19;  after  him,  in  the  next  twenty-five  years,  Prior, 
Steele,  Defoe,  Gay,  Pope,  the  great  Dean  Swift  in  1745, 
and,  last  of  all,  Bolingbroke,  in  175  1.  The  lifetime  of  this 
generation  of  men  really  decides  the  limits  of  the  period. 

It  may  be  admitted,  at  the  outset,  that  this  age  of  Queen 
Anne  is  not  one  of  the  inspiring  ages  of  history.  It  was  not 
an  age  of  faith,  of  heroism,  or  of  imagination.  Moralists, 
reformers,  poets  have  little  good  to  say  of  it.  That  "with- 
ered, unbelieving,  second-hand  eighteenth  century,"  says 
Carlyle  after  his  sweeping  fashion.  And  it  is  true  that 
this  age,  if  looked  at  from  the  outside  after  the  fashion  of 
the  picturesque  historian,  presents  some  unhandsome  fea- 
tures. If  it  was  not  flagrantly  immoral,  irreligious,  it  was 
very  worldly  and  without  lofty  ideals.  The  Elizabethan 
enthusiasm,  the  Puritan  zeal  had  passed;  the  new  philan- 
thropic and  reforming  zeal  had  not  yet  come.  Our  ancestors 
of  the  Queen  Anne  time,  in  fact,  were  suspicious  of  anything 
that  looked  like  enthusiasm,  as  disturbing  the  balance  of 
sense  and  reason,  but  their  society  and  morals  suffered  sadly 
for  lack  of  it.  The  rich  were  getting  richer  and  the  poor 
were  getting  poorer.  The  young  lord  in  the  country  hunted 
and  drank  and  bullied  and  swore,  and  voted  for  the  Tories 
and  shouted  for  Church  and  State, — you  can  see  him  in 
Fielding;  the  young  lord  in  town  diced  and  drank  at  White's, 

'33 


134  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  lounged  in  the  coffee-houses,  showed  his  person  and  his 
toilet  at  the  play,  fought  a  duel  now  and  then  in  Leicester 
Fields,  and  voted  for  the  Whigs  and  shouted  for  Marlbor- 
ough and  the  Protestant  Succession, — you  may  see  him  in 
the  Tatler  and  Spectator,  a  good  many  of  him. 

Gaming  was  high.  My  Lady  Cowper  says,  in  1715,  that 
no  one  thinks  of  setting  down  less  than  £200  at  White's. 
The  stage,  though  a  little  better  than  in  the  days  of  Charles 
II,  was  yet  bad  enough.  I  think  a  modern  audience  would 
hardly  sit  out  one  of  Mr.  Congreve's  rattling  comedies.  Old 
Parson  Adams  in  the  novel  wasn't  far  wrong  when  he 
averred  that  the  only  play  of  his  day  fit  for  a  Christian  to 
see  was  Mr.  Steele's  Conscious  Lovers,  though  that,  to  be 
sure,  was  as  good  as  a  sermon. 

Englishmen  were  getting  to  drink  deep,  too.  What  an 
enormous  amount  there  is  swallowed  in  one  of  Fielding's 
novels,  for  instance.  Temperance  didn't  always  accompany 
the  other  virtues.  Our  friend  Dick  Steele  was  too  often  in 
his  cups,  and  grave  Mr.  Addison  has  been  known  to  keep 
him  company.  My  Lord  Oxford  vexed  Queen  Anne  by  com- 
ing into  her  presence  tipsy  rather  too  often,  and  you  might 
have  seen  Mr.  Secretary  St.  John  of  a  morning  with  a 
wet  handkerchief  around  his  head  trying  to  cool  his  brain 
from  last  night's  drinking  before  he  began  the  day's 
correspondence.  The  lower  classes,  especially,  with  the  in- 
crease of  poverty  in  town  were  becoming  more  and  more  ad- 
dicted to  this  degrading  vice.  Early  in  the  century  the  bale- 
ful habit  of  gin-drinking,  unknown  in  England  before, 
spread  like  a  blight  over  London.  "Retailers,"  says 
Lecky,  "hung  out  painted  boards  announcing  that  their  cus- 
tomers could  be  made  drunk  for  a  penny,  dead  drunk  for 
two-pence,  and  should  have  straw  for  nothing."  And  after 
all  it  is  perhaps  the  prevailing  low  tone  of  moral  feeling, 
the  absence  of  any  quick  sensibility  in  moral  matters,  that 
depresses  you  most  as  you  look  at  the  surface  of  this  society. 
Fielding  is  not  immoral  at  heart.  But  look,  for  instance, 
into  some  of  those  books  that  seriously  profess  to  be  writ- 
ten in  the  interest  of  morality, — say  Richardson's  novels, 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     135 

which  one  admiring  prelate  pronounced  better  than  any 
other  book  in  the  world  except  the  Bible.  It  is  not  so  much 
that  they  are  bad,  as  that  they  do  not  know  what  goodness 
is;  they  have  no  high  ideals.  Richardson's  famous  novel  is 
entitled  Pamela,  or  Virtue  Rewarded;  what,  pray,  is  the  re- 
ward of  virtue?  Why  simply  that  the  abominable  rake  of  a 
young  squireen  who  has  been  pursuing  Pamela  through  three 
volumes  at  last  turns  about  and  offers  to  marry  her;  she 
falls  into  his  arms  at  once,  and  at  this  edifying  conclusion 
we  are  expected  to  be  melted  into  sympathy  and  admiration 
for  the  triumph  of  goodness.  Even  that  most  charming 
parson  in  a  tie-wig,  Mr.  Addison,  seems  to  me  to  preach 
sometimes  a  rather  low  and  prudential  kind  of  virtue.  I 
am  sure  it  is  not  the  stuff  out  of  which  greatness  is  made. 

As  for  religion  at  this  time,  everybody  knows  that  it 
seemed  to  be  pretty  much  worn  out  of  men;  its  vigor,  its 
hold  upon  conscience  almost  entirely  gone.  It  had  been 
made  a  matter  of  politics;  party  feeling  gathered  about  it; 
its  solemn  observances  had  been  made  the  formal  tests  of 
qualification  for  civil  office.  My  Lord  Bolingbroke  went 
from  White's  gaming  table,  or  some  worse  place  in  Drury 
Lane,  to  St.  Paul's  in  order  to  take  the  sacrament,  and  came 
home  to  write  an  essay  against  revealed  religion.  The 
Deistswho  attackedChristianity  and  the  Churchmen  who  de- 
fended it  had  both  been  so  anxious  to  prove  it  rational  that 
they  hadn't  left  much  of  anything  supernatural  in  it;  and 
plain  men  were  coming  to  think  it  not  worth  while  to  trouble 
themselves  much  about  it.  The  lifelong  endeavors  of  such 
men  as  good  Bishop  Butler  and  good  Bishop  Berkeley  and 
the  despairing  cynicism  of  such  men  as  the  great  Dean  Swift 
alike  indicate  that  there  was  little  religion  left  in  England. 
"It  is  come,"  says  Butler,  "I  know  not  how,  to  be  taken 
for  granted  by  many  persons  that  Christianity  is  not  so 
much  as  a  subject  for  inquiry,  but  that  it  is  now  at  length 
discovered  to  be  fictitious."  "I  suppose  it  will  be  granted," 
says  Swift,  "that  hardly  one  in  a  hundred  among  our  people 
of  quality  or  gentry  appears  to  act  by  any  principle  of 
religion,  while  great  numbers  of  them  entirely  discard  it." 


136  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

The  influence  of  the  clergy  upon  character  would  seem 
to  have  been  very  small.  In  the  country  many  of  the  better 
class  were  like  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley's  chaplain,  who  read 
one  of  South's  or  Barrow's  sermons  for  the  good  knight  of 
a  Sunday,  and  served  as  a  kind  of  confidential  valet  for  the 
rest  of  the  week;  while  the  other,  and  worse  kind  of  a  chap- 
lain, whom  one  sees  rather  too  frequently  in  the  literature  of 
the  time,  played  cards  with  my  lady  of  an  evening  when  she 
had  no  other  company,  rode  at  the  tail  of  a  hunt  sometimes, 
married  my  lady's  maid, — if  he  didn't  do  worse, — sat  at 
the  second  table,  and  helped  my  lord  to  bed  at  night  when 
he  was  unable  to  get  there  alone. 

Doubtless  it  would  be  possible,  in  this  way,  to  sketch  in 
a  picture  of  the  age  that  would  be  dark  enough,  and  to  cite 
only  facts  for  our  somber  coloring.  Yet  I  do  not  think  that 
in  the  deepest  sense  such  a  picture  would  be  true.  The  great 
mass  of  English  people  are,  and  always  have  been,  thought- 
ful, serious,  resolutely,  yes,  obstinately,  bent  on  right  things. 
So  they  were  in  the  age  of  Queen  Anne.  And  such  a  picture, 
whether  true  or  false,  would,  for  the  most  part,  be  beside 
our  purpose  as  students  of  the  literature  of  the  age.  Not 
that,  as  students  of  literature  we  are  indifferent  to  the  con- 
dition of  society,  manners,  morals,  religion;  for  literature  is 
the  expression  of  the  life  of  an  age,  and  the  student  of  liter- 
ature is  interested  in  all  that  makes  up  that  life.  It  becomes 
us,  however,  to  ask  not  what  are  the  striking,  external  as- 
pects of  the  life  of  an  age,  but  rather  what  were  the  ruling 
characteristics  and  tendencies  of  its  thought,  what  was  its 
intellectual  and  spiritual  temper,  that  decided  the  general 
direction  of  all  its  activities,  and  got  permanently  embodied 
in  letters. 

Now  broad  generalizations  about  the  temper  of  an  age 
are  not  always  very  safe ;  but  here  surely  one  risks  nothing  in 
saying  that  even  a  slight  examination  of  the  Queen  Anne 
time,  shows  what  a  fuller  examination  will  confirm,  that  in 
all  matters  where  the  intellect  was  at  all  concerned,  the 
ruling  characteristic  of  the  age  was  a  critical  and  reasoning 
temper.  There  was  a  universal  tendency  to  exalt  the  logical 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     137 

faculties  at  the  expense  of  the  imagination  and  the  emotions. 
There  was  a  universal  distrust  of  any  action  that  couldn't 
justify  itself  before  the  cool  judgment,  a  universal  passion 
for  clearness  and  plausibility,  for  coolness  and  sanity  of  tem- 
per. The  very  word  "enthusiasm,"  you  know,  was  never 
used  except  in  a  bad  sense.  The  age  prided  itself  not  on  its 
great  achievements,  on  its  heroic  efforts,  its  high  imagina- 
tion, but  on  its  good  sense  and  good  breeding.  Wit  and 
sense  are  its  cardinal  virtues ;  you  remember  how  the  changes 
are  rung  on  them  in  Pope's  verse.  "I  have  a  great  respect 
for  Paul,"  said  Anthony  Collins,  "he  was  a  man  of  sense  and 
a  gentleman."  With  an  amusing  self-complacency  the  men 
of  that  day  looked  back  upon  the  great  age  of  Elizabeth  as  a 
stormy,  half-barbaric  time  of  fanatic  religion  and  shocking 
manners  which  they  had  fortunately  outgrown.  Very  odd  it 
sounds  now  to  hear  the  youthful  Addison  say  of  Edmund 
Spenser : 

Old  Spenser,  next,  warm'd  with  poetic  rage, 
In  ancient  tales  amus'd  a  barbarous  age; 
An  age  that  yet  uncultivate  and  rude, 
Where'er  the  poet's  fancy  led,  pursu'd 

•  ••••• 

But  now  the  mystic  tale,  that  pleased  of  yore, 
Can  charm  an  understanding  age  no  more; 
The  long-spun  allegories  fulsome  grow, 
While  the  dull  moral  lies  too  plain  below. 

This  temper  was,  in  part,  I  suppose,  a  natural  reaction 
from  that  of  the  preceding  century  and  the  last  part  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  It  seems  sometimes  to  be  almost  a  law 
of  human  progress  that  the  advance  of  thought  shall  not  be 
constant  but  intermittent.  So  an  age  of  enthusiasm,  of 
faith,  of  adventurous  temper  is  very  likely  to  succeed  a 
longer  period  during  which  mental  activity  is  chiefly  directed 
to  the  criticism  of  accepted  opinions.  The  national  temper 
cools  down;  the  acquisitions  of  the  one  period  are  subjected 
to  the  sifting  scrutiny  of  the  next.  So  it  was  here.  In  the 
twenty-five  years  that  preceded  the  reign  of  Anne  the  whole 
temper  of  the  people  was  largely  changed.    They  were  sick 


138  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  controversy  over  theoretic  matters.  They  were  tired  of 
the  enthusiasms  that  produced  such  controversy.  A  rea- 
soned moderation  in  all  things  seemed  to  them  the  one  thing 
desirable.  We  hear  a  great  deal  about  the  reaction  in  morals 
that  followed  the  restoration  of  Charles  II  in  1660.  But  I 
think  that  reaction  is  exaggerated.  The  morality  of  the 
court  was  bad  enough,  doubtless;  as  to  Charles  himself  and 
the  little  group  of  profligate  courtiers  who  had  brought  back 
to  England  the  vices  and  not  the  graces  of  France,  the  less 
that  one  says  about  their  morals,  the  better,  as  any  one  who 
has  turned  over  the  pages  of  Pepys'  Diary  knows.  But  the 
contamination  didn't  extend  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
court.  The  great  mass  of  the  English  people  were  untouched 
by  it;  the  heart  of  the  nation,  Puritan  and  Cavalier  alike, 
was  sound,  and  the  domestic  virtues  yet  bloomed  fair.  But 
while  there  wasn't  any  general  reaction  against  Puritan  mo- 
rality, there  was  a  general  reaction  against  anything  like  en- 
thusiasm, irregularity,  anything  that  seemed  to  savor  of 
fanaticism.  Men  were  tired  of  it.  They  were  not  disposed  to 
lofty  emotions  or  to  lofty  doctrines.  Such  emotions  and  such 
doctrines  only  seemed  to  set  men  at  loggerheads.  Let  us 
have  no  more  of  them,  they  said.  We  have  had  enough  of 
New  Lights  and  New  Models;  now  let  us  follow  our  reason 
like  men  of  sense.  Let  us  give  our  attention  to  practical  mat- 
ters and  leave  to  one  side  vagaries  of  imagination  or  con- 
jecture. 

Not  that  the  age  was  indisposed  to  inquiry  and  dis- 
cussion. Quite  the  contrary;  there  was  a  universal  itch  for 
discussion.  Politics,  philosophy,  religion  descended  into  the 
street.  Every  question  that  was  thought  of  interest  at  all 
was  debated  at  the  club,  in  the  coffee-house,  in  the  drawing- 
room.  There  was,  of  course,  often  a  certain  thinness  in 
much  of  this  thinking,  and  the  line  of  argument  and  tone  of 
discussion  were  usually  such  as  befitted  those  places, — clear, 
plausible,  and  desultory,  rather  than  profound,  serious,  or 
systematic.  In  Bishop  Berkeley's  charming  Alciphron  Ly- 
sicles,  the  young  free  thinker,  is  made  to  say,  "I  will  under- 
take a  lad  of  fourteen,  bred  in  the  modern  way,  shall  make 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     139 

a  better  figure  and  be  more  considered  in  any  drawing-room 
or  any  assembly  of  polite  people,  than  one  at  four-and- 
twenty  who  hath  lain  by  a  long  time  at  school  or  college.  He 
shall  say  better  things  in  a  better  manner,  and  be  more  liked 
by  good  judges.  Where  doth  he  pick  up  this  improvement? 
Where  our  grave  ancestors  would  never  have  looked  for  it 
— in  a  drawing-room,  a  coffee-house,  a  chocolate-house,  at 
the  tavern,  or  groom-porter's.  In  these  and  the  like  fash- 
ionable places  of  resort,  it  is  the  custom  for  polite  people  to 
speak  freely  on  all  subjects,  religious,  moral,  or  political. 
So  that  the  young  gentleman  who  frequents  them  is  in  the 
way  of  hearing  many  instructive  lectures,  seasoned  with  wit 
and  raillery,  and  uttered  with  spirit."  It  is  odd  to  read  in 
the  Memoirs  of  the  Countess  of  Huntington  that  "My  Lord 
Bolingbroke  was  seldom  in  her  ladyship's  company  without 
discussing  some  topic  beneficial  to  his  eternal  interest." 

Now  this  distrust  of  enthusiasm  or  emotion,  this  demand 
for  clearness  and  sense,  this  easy,  almost  jaunty  confidence 
in  the  cool  logical  faculty, — you  may  see  them  all  at  their 
height,  I  should  say,  during  the  Queen  Anne  period.  And 
you  may  see  them  in  all  forms  of  thought.  In  politics,  for 
example.  The  old  high  traditional  notions  of  government 
had  been  pretty  much  overturned  by  the  Revolution  of  the 
previous  century.  Men  in  one  of  the  parties  kept  on  talking 
about  the  divine  right  of  kings;  but  nobody  believed  in  it; 
they  didn't  believe  it  themselves.  Said  Swift. — and  that, 
too,  after  he  had  turned  Tory, — 

I  confess  it  is  hard  to  conceive  how  any  law  which  the  supreme 
power  makes  may  not  by  the  same  supreme  power  be  repealed ;  so 
that  I  shall  not  determine  whether  the  Queen's  right  be  indefeasible 
or  not. 

It  was  plain  enough  in  spite  of  all  sophisms,  that  the 
monarch  who  had  preceded  Anne  had  been  King  of  England 
by  Act  of  Parliament, — nothing  more  or  less;  if  there  were 
any  such  thing  as  a  divine,  indefeasible  right  of  hereditary 
succession  to  the  throne  of  England,  why  then  the  crown 
belonged  not  on  the  head  of  Anne,  but  on  the  handsome 


140  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

curls  of  the  Chevalier  George,  who  was  fighting  Marlbor- 
ough over  the  water.  But  this  didn't  diminish  the  loyalty  of 
Englishmen  to  Anne.  The  truth  is,  the  divinity  that  doth 
hedge  a  king  was  unknown  in  England  after  1688.  The 
whole  question  of  the  nature  of  the  monarchy  and  the  re- 
lation of  the  different  parts  of  the  government  to  each  other 
had  been  brought  into  popular,  argumentative  discussion. 
Englishmen  wanted  a  wise  and  reasonable  rule;  for  the  ab- 
stract principle  underlying  it,  they  didn't  care. 

In  theology  and  philosophy  it  would  be  easy  to  show 
similar  tendencies.  The  whole  effort  of  the  deistic  move- 
ment was  to  divest  religion  of  all  that  was  mysterious  in 
doctrine  or  extravagant  in  profession,  and  bring  it  down  to 
the  easy  apprehension  of  the  coffee-house  and  the  drawing- 
room.  Before  all  things  it  must  be  made  to  seem  reasonable 
and  prudent.  Here  as  in  government,  the  test  is  a  wise  ex- 
pediency.   Pope  says,  you  remember,  not  only 


but  also 


For  forms  of  government  let  fools  contest; 
Whate'er  is  best  administered  is  best, 


For  modes  of  faith  let  graceless  zealots  fight ; 
His  can't  be  wrong,  whose  life  is  in  the  right. 


All  parties  were  content  to  assume  the  supremacy  and 
sufficiency  of  the  logical  reason.  It's  best  to  believe  in  a 
God,  said  the  Deists,  because  really  it  is  difficult  to  talk  on 
many  matters  reasonably  or  elegantly  without  assuming  one 
as  a  first  premise;  it's  safer  to  believe  in  a  God,  argued  the 
timid  orthodoxy  of  the  day,  because  at  all  events  there  may 
be  one,  and  he  will  damn  you,  if  you  don't. 

In  practical  religious  life,  likewise,  it  is  curious  to  notice 
the  same  ambition  for  a  reasoned  moderation,  for  philo- 
sophical regulation  of  life,  for  conduct  that  couldn't  be 
charged  with  folly.  It  is  said  by  Mr.  Hunt  in  his  History  of 
Religious  Thought  to  be  an  actual  fact  that  the  two  texts  on 
which  most  sermons  were  preached  in  England  during  the 
first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  were,  "Let  your  modera- 
tion be  known  unto  all  men,"  and  "Be  not  righteous  over- 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     141 

much."  But  these  were  not  exactly  the  texts  on  which  Wes- 
ley and  Whitefield  began  to  preach,  a  little  later. 

Now  when  you  turn  to  the  arts  you  see  still  more  clearly 
the  operation  of  the  same  thing.  The  same  critical,  cool, 
reasoning  temper  demanded  in  art  order,  grace,  regularity, 
propriety.  It  insisted  upon  adherence  to  the  probabilities  of 
life;  upon  reasonable  obedience  to  rules  and  models;  it  was 
shocked  by  irregularities  of  form,  by  too  wide  a  departure 
from  convention.  In  music  the  absurd  unrealities  of  the  new 
romantic  opera  were  a  source  of  endless  criticism.  You  re- 
member those  charming  papers  of  the  Spectator  in  which 
Mr.  Addison  makes  delicious  fun  of  Signor  Nicolini  and 
his  new  Italian  opera  of  Hydaspes:  the  sparrows  who  be- 
longed in  the  orange  grove,  but  would  fly  into  the  lady's 
chamber;  the  painted  grifRns  who  had  become  so  expert  in 
spitting  fire,  and  the  stage  lion  who,  being  a  candle-snuffer 
by  trade,  had  a  bad  trick  of  standing  on  his  hinder  paws  all 
the  time,  and  having  unfortunately  proved  too  much  for  the 
hero  once  or  twice  in  the  mortal  combat,  had  to  be  super- 
seded by  a  country  gentleman  who  plays  the  lion  for  diver- 
sion, but  desires  his  name  should  be  concealed.  "Audi- 
ences," says  Mr.  Addison,  "have  often  been  reproached  by 
writers  for  the  coarseness  of  their  taste;  but  our  present 
grievance  does  not  seem  to  be  the  want  of  a  good  taste, 
but  common  sense." 

On  the  tragic  stage  it  was  only  with  some  difficulty  that 
the  audience  of  those  days  could  endure  the  irregularities 
and  license  of  such  a  Gothic  writer  as  Shakespeare.  And 
indeed  they  must  have  seemed  strange  when  Betterton  acted 
Macbeth  in  a  tie-wig  and  knee-buckles,  and  Mrs.  Brace- 
girdle  received  the  raptures  of  Romeo  in  a  hoop  of  twelve 
yards'  circumference.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Addison's 
famous  tragedy  of  Cato,  most  unimpeachably  correct  and 
insufferably  priggish  of  all  plays,  was  accounted  the  highest 
reach  of  dramatic  art,  the  crown  of  its  author's  fame. 

The  one  form  of  dramatic  composition  in  which  the  age 
would  seem  likely  to  move  freely  and  with  success  was  the 
comedy  of   manners,    in   which   the   wit,   the   address,   the 


1 42  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

humors  of  contemporary  life  are  reproduced  upon  the  stage, 
and  in  fact  for  a  little  time  this  was  true.  There  is  nothing 
more  brilliant  in  English  comedy  than  some  of  Congreve's 
work;  but  Congreve  and  his  contemporaries  ruined  their 
drama  by  their  salacious  contempt  for  common  morality; 
and  there  is  no  better  proof  of  the  moral  health  of  English 
taste  than  the  fact  that  this  school  of  comedy  which,  meas- 
ured merely  by  intellectual  brilliancy,  promised  so  fair  at 
the  beginning  of  Anne's  reign,  sank  into  entire  extinction 
within  thirty  years. 

In  no  one  of  the  arts  does  this  passion  for  order  and 
method  appear  more  clearly  or  more  instinctively  than  in 
architecture.  It  is  curious  to  notice  the  violent  dislike  Eng- 
lishmen of  the  age  entertained  for  Gothic  architecture.  The 
word  "Gothic"  itself  began  then  to  be  used,  not  as  applicable 
especially  to  architecture,  but  as  a  general  adjective  of  re- 
proach which  signified  about  the  same  as  barbarous  or  medi- 
eval. The  taste  of  the  age  was  pleased  with  lightness,  sim- 
plicity, proportion,  broad  curves,  economy  of  line.  A  great 
Gothic  cathedral  seemed  dark,  vast,  complicated;  its  de- 
tails were  intricate  and  perplexing;  it  was  covered  without 
and  filled  within  with  an  unmeaning  profusion  of  ornament. 
Addison's  architectural  comments  are  often  curious  and 
suggestive.  His  papers  on  Westminster  Abbey  are,  indeed, 
among  the  most  beautiful  specimens  of  his  writing;  it  is  evi- 
dent, however,  that  it  is  not  the  architectural  impressiveness 
of  the  building  that  moves  him,  but  the  grand  historical  and 
religious  associations  of  the  abbey,  and  its  solemn  me- 
mentos of  our  common  mortality.  His  admiration  for 
the  great  St.  Paul's  that  Christopher  Wren  had  just  fin- 
ished was  unbounded.  Some  of  you  will  remember  his 
papers  on  architecture  in  the  Spectator.  The  Pantheon  at 
Rome  is  certainly  a  very  noble  building,  but  modern  ideas 
get  a  shock  on  seeing  it  put  into  comparison  thus :  "Let 
any  one  reflect  on  the  disposition  of  mind  he  finds  in  himself 
at  his  first  entrance  into  the  Pantheon  at  Rome,  and  how 
his  imagination  is  filled  with  something  great  and  amazing; 
and  at  the  same  time  consider  how  little  in  proportion  he  is 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     143 

affected  with  the  inside  of  a  Gothic  cathedral,  though  it  be 
five  times  larger  than  the  other;  which  can  arise  from  noth- 
ing else  but  the  greatness  of  manner  in  the  one  and  the 
meanness  of  manner  in  the  other." 

In  the  account  of  his  early  travels  Mr.  Addison  has  a 
great  deal  to  say  of  Venice,  but  not  a  single  word,  I  be- 
lieve, for  St.  Mark's;  while  the  great  Cathedral  of  Siena 
only  suggests  the  remark  that,  "When  a  man  sees  the  pro- 
digious pains  and  expense  our  forefathers  have  been  at  in 
these  barbarous  buildings,  one  can  not  but  fancy  to  him- 
self what  miracles  of  architecture  they  would  have  left  us 
had  they  been  only  instructed  in  the  right  way." 

Now  these  characteristics  in  the  taste  and  temper  of 
the  age,  which,  as  I  have  been  trying  to  suggest  in  this  rapid 
and  sketchy  way,  are  to  be  seen  in  all  forms  of  thought,  de- 
cided of  course  the  character  of  its  polite  literature. 

This  passion  for  reasonableness,  for  moderation,  for 
good  sense,  for  grace  of  form;  this  dislike  of  extravagance, 
of  whatever  seemed  rude,  or  irregular,  or  uncultivated,  all 
this  is  seen  of  course  in  letters  better  than  anywhere  else. 
You  may  see  the  attractiveness  of  the  new  civilization  for 
the  men  of  the  time;  their  vast  esteem  for  refinement,  for 
the  arts  and  graces  of  society.  They  wanted  to  get  as  far 
away  as  possible  from  the  great  ages  of  fanaticism  and  bad 
taste.  Good  breeding  must  express  itself  in  letters.  Society 
begins  to  talk  in  print;  and  it  talks  very  charmingly.  There 
is  moderation  and  urbanity  in  what  it  says.  If  a  man  has 
anything  to  say,  thought  the  Queen  Anne  men,  let  him  say 
it  so  that  well-bred  men  of  wit  and  sense  shall  care  to  listen. 
A  man  certainly  ought  to  be  able  to  write  as  well  as  he  can 
talk ;  and  no  man  of  breeding  thinks  of  running  into  extrava- 
gance, long-winded  rhetoric,  or  rhodomontade  in  his  talk. 
Now  the  result  of  such  a  temper  as  this  is  that  for  the  first 
time  we  have  a  good,  serviceable,  every-day  prose  style  in 
English, — clear,  flexible,  racy,  idiomatic,  and  not  too  far 
removed  from  the  easy  grace  of  conversation.  It  was  an 
immense  gain.  Contrast  the  prose  of  the  Queen  Anne  men 
with  the  prose  that  was  written  by  the  men  of  fifty  years 


144  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

earlier,  say  by  Milton,  Sir.  Thomas  Browne,  Jeremy  Taylor ; 
it  is  like  a  new  speech.  The  prose  of  Swift  or  Addison  is 
modern  prose, — graceful,  if  it  be  Addison's,  forceful  if  it 
be  Swift's, — but  in  either  case  easy,  simple  in  structure,  self- 
possessed,  with  the  varied  but  natural  modulation  of  good 
conversation  between  man  and  man.  And  in  spite  of  the 
occasional  protest  and  example  of  such  writers  as  De  Quin- 
cey  and  Ruskin,  who  would  carry  prose  into  the  province  of 
oratory  or  poetry,  I  think  it  will  be  generally  admitted  that, 
as  far  as  form  goes,  the  prose  of  these  Queen  Anne  men 
leaves  little  to  be  desired.  To  be  sure,  we  get  early  speci- 
mens of  this  kind  of  prose  before  the  close  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  in  the  work  of  Locke  and  Dryden ;  but  it  was 
not  until  the  time  that  we  are  considering  that  it  can  be  said 
to  have  been  popularized.  During  this  Queen  Anne  time,  it 
is  remarkable  how  many  men  wrote  well;  how  generally 
diffused  was  the  habit  of  clear  and  effective,  graceful 
expression. 

Doubtless  there  is  in  much  of  this  writing  a  certain  thin- 
ness, a  glib  assurance  rather  than  any  breadth  of  view  or 
richness  of  suggestion.  It  may  be  plausibly  urged  sometimes 
that  these  men  write  so  easily  because  they  have  so  little  to 
say.  Yet  to  say  little  with  clearness  and  charm  is  perhaps 
better  than  to  say  more  with  repellent  obscurity  of  manner. 
The  pamphleteer,  the  essayist  of  Queen  Anne's  time,  had 
learned  the  rare  art  of  making  the  most  efficient  use  of  his 
material.  And  before  we  ascribe  the  clearness  of  this 
Queen  Anne  prose  to  its  shallowness,  we  must  remember 
that  the  one  man  who  was  perhaps  the  most  consummate 
master  of  English  in  his  generation  was  no  coffee-house  wit, 
but  the  profoundest  English  philosopher  of  his  century.  No 
man  has  ever  yet  succeeded  better  in  conveying  profoundest 
meaning  in  most  lucid  graceful  prose  than  Bishop  Berkeley. 

With  poetry,  to  be  sure,  the  case  was  different.  If  you 
insist  on  an  elevated  imagination  and  a  warmth  of  feeling  as 
requisites  of  poetry,  you  will  hardly  find  any  poetry  in  the 
Queen  Anne  time.  It  has  been  the  fashion  sometimes,  in- 
deed, to  deny  that  Mr.  Pope's  famous  verses  are  poetry  at 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     145 

all.  But  that  depends  upon  how  you  define  poetry.  Certainly 
they  are  a  very  different  kind  of  poetry  from  that  which 
Milton,  or  Shakespeare,  or  Burns,  or  Shelley  wrote.  And 
yet  little  Mr.  Pope  is  as  sure  of  his  niche  in  our  temple  of 
fame  as  any  of  them.  Indeed,  if  success  consists  in  attaining 
completely  what  one  aims  at,  in  satisfying  one's  ideal,  then 
I  am  not  sure  but  Pope  was  the  most  successful  of  writers. 
Standards  change.  We  value  a  poem  now  for  its  power  to 
stir  the  emotions  and  to  enlarge  or  uplift  the  imagination. 
In  our  definition  of  poetry  we  adopt  Coleridge's  antithesis 
between  poetry  and  science,  and  fix  the  essential  character- 
istics of  poetry  not  in  its  form  but  in  its  subject  and  spirit. 
We  have  so  given  ourselves  over  to  the  romantic  school  that 
the  very  phrase  "a  didactic  poem"  sounds  to  us  like  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms.  We  insist  that  the  poet  should  find  his 
subject  in  the  realm  of  emotion  or  passion  and  should  see  it 
through  the  imagination,  not  through  the  cool,  dry  light  of 
the  intellect.  But  a  poem  in  Queen  Anne's  time  was  first  of 
all  a  work  of  art.  It  differed  from  other  writing  not  pri- 
marily in  subject  but  in  form.  Grace  of  manner,  skill,  per- 
fection of  workmanship,  conformity  to  recognized  canons  of 
taste,  these  were  what  the  coffee-house  critics  of  17 10  ad- 
mired. The  excellencies  of  this  poetry,  you  see,  are  those 
which  the  intellect  without  the  emotions  is  fitted  to  under- 
stand and  appreciate.  Neatness,  point,  epigrammatic  brev- 
ity, careful  balance  of  parts,  skill  in  the  turning  of  a  phrase, 
wit  in  the  narrow,  modern  sense,  and  in  the  broader  sense  in 
which  Pope  used  the  word, — good  and  quick  judgment, — 
these  are  the  ideals  aimed  at.  Poetry  is  a  kind  of  perfected 
rhythmic  conversation,  with  the  wit,  innuendo,  allusion  of 
the  best  conversation, — all  elevated  a  little,  pruned  of  irrele- 
vant matter,  and  confined  in  regular  verse.  That  is  Pope's 
poetry,  and  Prior's.  One  may  not  call  it  poetry,  and  one 
may  greatly  prefer  his  Shelley  or  his  Browning;  but  to  have 
no  relish  of  it  would  seem  to  argue  some  deficiency  of  appre- 
ciation. It  has  finish,  the  flavor  of  culture,  the  aroma  of 
good  society  about  it.  Man  isn't  a  hero  and  an  adven- 
turer; he  belongs  in  drawing-rooms,  and  this,  said  our  an- 


i46  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

cestors,  is  the  well-bred  poetry  he  ought  to  read.  See  it 
sparkle ! 

However  widely  our  tastes  may  differ  about  this  Queen 
Anne  literature,  I  believe  we  must  all  grant  to  it  the  virtues 
it  professed.  It  was  clear  and  sane.  The  opinions  of  these 
men  were  often  shallow  and  often  narrow;  but  they  knew 
what  they  meant  themselves  and  they  could  tell  you.  And 
really  it  is  worth  while  to  cultivate  that  virtue.  I  was  read- 
ing the  other  day  Mr.  Swinburne  on  Mr.  Rossetti's  poetry; 
and  this  is  what  Mr.  Swinburne  said  of  it: 

It  has  the  fullest  fervour  and  fluency  of  impulse,  and  the  impulse 
is  always  towards  harmony  and  perfection.  It  has  the  inimitable 
note  of  instinct,  and  the  instinct  is  always  high  and  right.  It  carries 
weight  enough  to  overbear  the  style  of  a  weaker  man,  but  no  weight 
of  thought  can  break  it,  no  subtlety  of  emotion  attenuate,  no  ardor 
of  passion  deface.  It  can  breathe  unvexed  in  the  finest  air  and 
pass  unsinged  through  the  keenest  fire.  It  has  all  the  grace  of 
perfect  force  and  all  the  force  of  perfect  grace.  It  is  sinuous  as 
water  or  as  light,  flexible  and  penetrative,  delicate  and  rapid;  it 
works  on  its  way  without  halt  or  jar  or  collapse. 

What  do  you  suppose  Dick  Steele  or  Joseph  Addison  or 
even  that  much  maligned  Queen  Anne  critic,  John  Dennis, 
would  have  said  to  such  a  rhapsody  of  words  as  that?  Some 
of  Mr.  Addison's  criticism, — on  the  Paradise  Lost,  for 
instance, — is  certainly  rather  wooden,  but  it  has  the  very 
great  advantage  over  all  such  criticism  as  this,  that  it  does 
mean  something,  and  we  readers  of  average  intelligence  may 
know  precisely  what  it  means. 

And  for  the  poetry  of  the  period  we  can  claim  a  similar 
excellence.  For  my  own  part,  I  should  certainly  prefer  the 
poetry  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  to  the  poetry  of  the 
early  eighteenth  century;  and  yet,  in  these  days  when  so 
much  stress  is  laid  upon  the  picturesque,  the  suggestive,  or 
even  the  mere  musical  functions  of  poetry,  when  Mr.  Ad- 
dington  Symonds  thinks  Shelley  has  realized  the  miracle  of 
"making  words  altogether  detached  from  any  meaning  the 
substance  of  a  new,  ethereal  music,"  I  say  it  is  not  alto- 
gether unpleasant  to  take  up  this  old-fashioned  verse  whose 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     147 

first  charm  is  clear  and  pithy  meaning.  And  the  matter  of 
which  this  poetry  is  made  up,  if  it  be  neither  novel  nor  mov- 
ing, has  at  least  that  first  mark  of  classic  literature,  univer- 
sality. The  stuff  of  most  of  Pope's  poetry,  for  instance,  is 
nothing  but  a  selection  from  the  phenomena  and  the  laws 
of  society  and  of  morals.  Such  material  is  familiar  enough, 
certainly;  all  truths  of  conduct  are  familiar:  but  it  is  of 
perennial  interest.  The  poets  of  that  age  could  not  clothe 
their  material  in  imagery,  for  as  I  have  been  saying,  it  was 
characteristic  of  the  age  not  to  think  in  images,  but  to  think 
in  propositions;  yet  it  is  no  mean  art  that  can  give  to  a  great 
body  of  truths,  social  and  moral,  a  final  poetic  form,  clear, 
pointed,  and  vigorous. 

Such  then  was  the  general  temper  of  the  age  of  Anne  as 
it  found  expression  in  politics  and  theology,  in  art  and  let- 
ters.    But  upon  literature  there  were  certain  other  causes 
operating  which  tended  to  the  same  results.     One  was  the 
influence  of  France.    The  civilization  of  France  during  the 
seventeenth  century,   though   hardly  touching  the  mass  of 
the  people,  was  more  brilliant  than  that  of  any  other  coun- 
try of  Europe.    The  literature  of  France,  indeed,  during  the 
period  of  the  Renaissance  was  not  so  original,  vigorous,  and 
imaginative    as   that    of    England   during    the    same    time. 
France  hardly  had  a   Shakespeare  or  a  Milton.     But  the 
literary  art  had  been  carried  to  a  higher  perfection,  per- 
haps, in  France  than  in  England.   The  influence  of  the  great 
Greek  and  Latin  classics,   when  they  were   first  popularly 
known  in  the  sixteenth  century,  seemed  to  be  quite  different 
in   England   and   in   France.      In   England   they  stimulated 
imagination  and  curiosity;  their  history  and  legend  filtered 
down  through  translations  into  the  active  minds  of  many 
men  who  like  Shakespeare  had  small  Latin  and  less  Greek, 
and  thus  they  co-operated  with  other  causes  and  helped  to 
set  English  literature  upon  a  course  of  independent  develop- 
ment.     But  in  France  they  served  rather  as  models  to  In 
admired    and    imitated.      The    result    was    the    more    rapid 
growth  in  France  of  a  spirit  ot  literary  criticism  and  greater 
attention  to  literary  form.    In  Queen  Anne's  time  the  French 


i48  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

had  attained  for  half  a  century  and  more  that  elegance  and 
correctness  which  the  English  were  aiming  at.  And  the 
French,  it  goes  without  saying,  seemed  by  nature  to  excel 
in  just  that  clearness  and  point  which  the  English  at  the  time 
of  Queen  Anne  most  admired.  It  is  hard  to  measure  any 
such  influence  as  this,  and  I  think  it  has  often  been  exag- 
gerated; but  in  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  un- 
questionably it  was  very  great.  French  was  the  language  of 
diplomacy,  of  learning,  of  society,  of  fashion,  of  travel; 
every  cultivated  Englishman  read  it.  The  influence  upon 
English  literary  manner  was  inevitable;  and  it  flowed  not 
so  much  from  any  one  author,  as  from  the  general  spirit  and 
manner  of  French  thought  and  speech.   As  Pope  says, — 

We  conquer'd  France,  but  felt  our  captive's  charms; 
Her  arts  victorious  triumph 'd  o'er  our  arms; 
Britain  to  soft  refinements  less  a  foe, 
Wit  grew  polite,  and  numbers  learn'd  to  flow. 

Literature  was  also  affected,  of  course,  by  the  peculiar 
constitution  of  society  at  the  time.  Now  the  most  important 
social  fact  in  England  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  was  the  growth  of  a  great  middle  commercial  class, 
who  were  rapidly  growing  wealthy  by  trade.  Getting  much 
of  the  wealth  of  the  country  into  their  hands,  they  were  get- 
ting also  that  influence  which  wealth  gives.  They  owned  the 
greater  part  of  the  national  debt  which  England  had  been 
piling  up  for  twenty  years.  Their  money  was  fighting  Eng- 
land's battles.  They  were  shrewd,  quick-witted,  with  a  good 
knowledge  of  men  and  things;  and  it  was  clear  that  they 
were  likely  to  hold  the  balance  of  political  power  in  Eng- 
land. Neither  party  could  afford  to  overlook  them.  How  to 
reach  them,  was  the  question.  There  were  three  hundred 
thousand  of  them  within  five  miles  of  the  Parliament 
Houses;  but  to  report  a  word  of  what  was  said  there  was  a 
crime,  and  the  eloquence  of  Bolingbroke  and  Wyndham  was 
never  heard  outside  the  walls  of  St.  Stephen's.  Nothing 
was  left  but  to  write  for  them.  It  was  for  them  that  the 
pamphlet  was  invented.     It  was  for  them  that  Defoe  and 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     149 

Steele  and  Swift  wrote,  and  wrote  their  best.  Indeed,  all 
three  really  belonged  to  that  class  themselves.  I  doubt 
whether  the  political  influence  of  the  press  was  ever  so  great 
as  it  was  for  a  little  time  during  the  reign  of  Anne.  The 
pen  of  Swift  was  literally  mightier  than  the  sword  of  Marl- 
borough. It  was  the  natural  result  that  men  of  letters  should 
all  be  drawn  into  political  life.  With  the  single  exception  of 
Pope,  every  writer  of  any  eminence  during  the  reign  of 
Anne — Defoe,  Addison,  Swift,  Steele,  Prior,  Bolingbroke, 
Gay,  Parnell,  Arbuthnot,  and  all  the  rest — held  some  office, 
or  was  in  some  way  actively  connected  with  public  life. 
This  fact,  too,  of  course,  co-operated  with  the  other  causes 
I  have  mentioned  to  give  to  the  literature  of  the  age  its  clear 
and  practical  character.  Such  men  would  of  necessity  write 
like  men  of  affairs  who  are  addressing  the  people. 

But  this  great  middle  class  needed  to  be  entertained,  too. 
It  was  largely  for  them  that  the  Tatlers  and  the  Spectators 
were  written.  It  was  coming  to  be  an  inquisitive  reading 
class.  It  wanted  to  know  about  itself  and  about  its  betters. 
It  had  some  relish  of  the  best  things  in  letters  and  art.  Now, 
for  the  first  time,  the  writer  could  depend  on  having  a  public. 
Remember,  there  was  no  book-buying  public  in  England 
until  about  1700.  Then  for  the  first  time  sprang  up  the  race 
of  booksellers.  Everybody  who  has  read  Dryden  remembers 
old  Jacob  Tonson,  with  his  two  left  legs,  his  "leering  looks, 
bull-face,  and  Judas-colored  hair." 

The  booksellers,  Curll  and  Lintot,  you  know,  play  al- 
most as  conspicuous  a  part  in  the  story  of  Pope's  life  as 
Pope  himself.  But  booksellers  mean  book-buyers,  an  audi- 
ence who  will  listen  to  the  writer  and  pay  him.  Before  1700, 
if  any  writer  made  a  living  by  his  pen, — and  very  few  did, — 
he  must  write  for  the  stage,  or  he  must  depend  upon  the 
bounty  of  some  wealthy  patron.  Shakespeare  would  seem  to 
have  got  together  a  snug  fortune  by  the  proceeds  of  his 
theatrical  property  and  by  shrewd  investments  in  real  es- 
tate; but  doesn't  every  school  boy  remember  that  Milton 
and  his  family  received  for  the  copyright  of  Paradise  Lost, 
all  told,  £18  or  $90?     Dryden  set  his  genius  out  to  hire 


150  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

for  years  by  writing  two  plays  a  year — and  mighty  poor 
plays  some  of  them  were,  as  Pepys  would  say — to  get  bread 
and  butter;  and  almost  every  one  of  his  admirable  prose 
dedications  was  aimed  at  the  pocketbook  of  some  noble  pa- 
tron. But  by  the  time  of  Anne  an  author  might  write  for  the 
public  and  find  a  publisher  to  pay  him  for  it.  Eighty  thou- 
sand copies  of  Defoe's  pamphlet,  The  True  Born  English- 
man, were  sold  on  the  streets  of  London.  The  daily  circula- 
tion of  the  Spectator  was  about  4,000  copies,  sometimes 
reaching  as  high  as  13,000,  and  when  the  numbers  were 
collected  into  volumes,  more  than  10,000  copies  of  each 
successive  volume  were  immediately  sold.  Swift's  most 
popular  pamphlet  ran  through  four  editions  in  a  week,  and 
above  100,000  copies  of  Gulliver' 's  Travels  were  sold  in 
five  years.  When  Lintot  printed  Pope's  Iliad  he  issued 
a  handsome  subscription  edition  of  650  copies  for  the 
aristocracy,  but  he  printed  a  cheap  little  duodecimo  edition 
for  the  people,  and  he  sold  7,500  copies  of  that  within 
a  few  weeks.  You  couldn't  sell  so  many  copies  of  a  new 
translation  of  Homer  now. 

This  popularity  meant  fame,  you  see;  it  was  worth  writ- 
ing for.  Sometimes  it  meant  money  too.  The  first  fortune 
made  by  any  English  writer  solely  by  the  sale  of  his  works, 
I  suppose,  was  that  made  by  Mr.  Pope  from  his  translation 
of  Homer.  That  work  brought  him  the  pretty  sum  of 
£9,000 — and  money  was  then  worth  many  times  what  it 
is  now — which  he,  as  we  all  remember,  put  into  that  charm- 
ing little  villa  of  Twickenham,  with  its  lawn  and  grotto, 
and  shellwork,  and  all  sorts  of  stiff  eighteenth  century 
bric-a-brac. 

Another  thing  that  decided  the  character  of  the  Queen 
Anne  literature  was  the  immense  growth  of  London  rela- 
tively to  the  rest  of  England.  So  far  as  literature  is  con- 
cerned, England  from  1700  to  1740  practically  meant  Lon- 
don. In  Queen  Anne's  time  one-tenth  the  population  of 
England  and  Wales  lived  within  four  miles  of  St.  Paul's. 
The  population  of  London  is  one-sixth  that  of  England  and 
Wales  to-day;  but  there  are  now  more  large  towns  outside  of 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     151 

London  than  there  were  then,  and  the  means  of  communica- 
tion are  so  many  and  so  rapid  that  what  is  said  or  printed  in 
London  in  the  morning  goes  all  around  the  world  before 
noon.  Indeed,  the  growth  of  other  literary  centers,  the  in- 
crease in  the  means  of  spreading  intelligence,  and  the  change 
in  English  literary  taste  deprived  London  of  its  exclusive 
claim  to  a  literary  preeminence  before  the  close  of  the  cen- 
tury; but  in  Queen  Anne's  day  the  great  mass  of  the  active, 
intelligent,  curious  public  were  crowded  into  the  metropolis. 
And  I  suppose  the  London  population  was  more  homogene- 
ous then  than  it  is  now.  Extremes  were  not  so  far  apart.  I 
should  think  it  probable  that  the  average  intelligence  of  Lon- 
don was  higher,  and  the  proportion  of  readers  to  its  whole 
population  greater,  during  the  first  third  of  the  eighteenth 
century  than  it  ever  has  been  since.  Now  when  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  reading  public,  and  that  the  most  intelligent  por- 
tion, is  thus  gathered  immediately  around  the  center  of  gov- 
ernment and  society,  you  have  the  most  favorable  conditions 
for  the  growth  of  a  literature  which  shall  deal  in  brief,  rapid, 
effective  fashion  with  the  passing  events  of  the  day.  The 
pamphlet  of  Defoe  or  Swift  or  the  Spectator  of  Addison 
would  be  five  days  old  before  it  could  reach  Chester  or  York; 
but  it  could  be  laid  damp  from  the  press  on  five  hundred  cof- 
fee-house tables  in  London  and  be  read  before  night  by  fifty 
thousand  people.  In  these  circumstances  literature  inevit- 
ably became,  as  never  before  or  since,  a  town  literature. 
No  other  period  of  our  literary  history  has  linked  itself 
by  so  many  associations  to  the  actual  town  or  left  so  many 
memories  of  itself  in  almost  every  street.  As  one  walks 
through  that  great,  murky  Babel  of  a  London  to-day  with 
his  head  full  of  Mr.  Gay's  Trivia,  or  Mr.  Addison's  Spr  - 
tutor,  or  Dr.  Swift's  Journal,  the  imagination  will  easily 
paint  for  him  that  dim-lighted  London  of  Queen  Anne's 
day,  its  picturesque  old  street  fronts,  its  hurrying  crowd 
with  knee-breeches  and  wigs  and  swords,  its  shouting  chair- 
men that  jostle  you  from  the  walk  as  they  hurry  on  with  my 
lady  in  her  sedan  to  the  masque  or  the  play,  her  two  link  boys 
with  lighted  torches  in  advance,  her  two  stout  footmen  with 


152  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

oaken  cudgels  tramping  on  by  her  chair  windows ;  the  blast 
of  the  horn  and  the  creak  and  rattle  as  the  Cambridge 
coach  comes  rolling  down  the  Strand  driving  everything  be- 
fore it,  and  reining  up  its  smoking  team  at  Locket's  in  Char- 
ing Cross,  while  its  passengers,  mightily  glad  to  have 
escaped  Captain  Macheath  on  Horseley  Down,  unpack 
themselves,  and  the  trim  barmaid  in  white  apron  meets 
them  at  open  door  with  smiling  face.  Somehow  this 
Queen  Anne  London  always  seems  more  real  to  me  than 
Queen  Victoria's.  The  great  dome  of  Paul's,  a  little 
more  delightful,  mellowed,  and  smoked  than  when  it 
was  new  and  staring  white  in  Addison's  days,  is  Queen 
Anne's  church,  and  Addison's,  and  Sacheverell's,  and 
Swift's, — doesn't  old  Queen  Anne  stand  ever  before  it 
on  a  statue  whose  limp  and  stupid  look  is  admirable? 
The  Great  Holborn  Viaduct  is  thrown  across  the  de- 
scent of  Snow  Hill  now,  but  you  can  go  down  under  it 
if  you  choose  and  walk  up  that  gentle  slope  down  which 
the  Mohocks  rolled  the  women  they  had  headed  up  in  bar- 
rels for  this  polite  diversion.  As  you  pass  out  of  the  broad 
square  of  Covent  Garden,  on  the  east  side,  under  Inigo 
Jones'  piazza,  you  will  not  forget  that  house  just  in  front 
of  you  at  the  corner  of  Bow  and  Russell  Streets.  It's  now 
a  grocer's  shop ;  but  in  at  that  door  and  up  that  stair  passed 
the  wit  and  fashion  of  Queen  Anne's  time,  for  that  was 
Will's  Coffee-house,  where  you  might  see 

Priests  sipping  coffee, 

Sparks  and  poets,  tea. 

Here  in  the  corner  by  the  fire  stood  great  Dryden's  chair, 
and  here — if  we  may  still  believe  the  old  tradition — came 
to  see  the  great  Dryden  the  youthful  Pope, 

As  yet  a  child,  nor  yet  a  fool  to  fame, 

[He]  lisped  in  numbers,  for  the  numbers  came. 

Will's  was  the  center  of  wit  and  letters  until  they  migrated 
across  the  street  to  Button's,  at  27  Russell  Street.     It's  a 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     153 

fruit  vendor's  shop  now;  but  it  will  always  be  to  us  the 
coffee-house  where  the  great  Mr.  Addison  held  his  court. 

You  walk  westward  through  the  Strand  and  Pall  Mall, 
and  stand  in  front  of  the  castellated  gate  of  old  St.  James', 
and  here  perhaps  rather  than  anywhere  else  do  you  feel 
yourself  in  Queen  Anne's  London.  Inside  these  respectable 
and  dingy  walls  she  lived  and  she  died.  The  house  next 
door,  in  front  of  which  stand  always  now  a  couple  of  red- 
coated  sentries,  is  the  town  house  of  the  Prince  of  Wales 
to-day,  but  it  will  always  keep  its  old  name  of  Marlborough 
House,  and  you  will  always  remember  that  Queen  Anne  built 
it  for  her  friend  and  crony,  her  Mrs.  Freeman,  the  Duchess 
of  Marlborough.  When  the  two  old  ladies,  one  of  whom 
had  a  very  hot  temper  and  the  other  a  very  sulky  one,  after- 
wards quarreled,  as  such  persons  usually  do,  the  Queen 
would  have  been  glad  to  get  her  house  back  again  and  the 
pretty  corner  of  park  on  which  she  had  built  it;  but  she 
couldn't,  and  the  great  Duchess  Sarah  lived  here,  and  died 
here  at  last,  in  spite  of  her  plucky  retort  when  they  told 
her  that  only  a  blister  could  save  her, — "I  won't  be  blis- 
tered, and  I  won't  die,  either!" 

Stand  with  your  back  to  St.  James,  and  look  up  the 
street.  At  your  right  was  the  St.  James  Coffee-house,  head- 
quarters of  all  the  Whig  Party,  just  opposite  the  Cocoa 
Tree,  headquarters  of  all  the  Tories.  In  this  street  lived 
Addison.  Parnell  was  in  the  lane  leading  off  to  the  left.  In 
Bury  Street,  first  turn  to  the  right,  Swift  had  his  first  floor 
dining-room  and  bedchamber,  at  eight  shillings  a  week, — 
"and  plaguy  dear  'tis,"  he  says.  The  Queen  Anne  men  and 
memories  are  all  about  us. 

But  to  think  of  the  Queen  Anne  London  makes  one 
over-garrulous ;  let  me  keep  to  my  theme ! 

Such  reminiscences  may  remind  us  of  the  last  char- 
acteristic of  this  Queen  Anne  literature  that  I  will  name 
to-day.  It  is  eminently  a  personal  literature.  It  is  true,  in- 
deed, that  all  literary  work  of  any  value  is,  in  an  important 
sense,  an  expression  of  the  personality  of  its  author.  It  it 
precisely  the  prerogative  of  the  man  of  original  genius  to 


154  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

pass  truth  and  emotions  through  his  own  character  and  issue 
them  with  the  stamp  of  his  own  individuality.    Hence,  in  my 
judgment,  all  fruitful  literary  criticism  must  take  into  ac- 
count the  personal  character  and  surroundings  of  those  au- 
thors whose  work  it  would  explain  or  estimate.    But  at  no 
other  period  is  this  personal  element  in  our  literature  so 
high  as  in  the  Queen  Anne  time.     The  literature  of  the 
time  is  a  disclosure  of  the  daily  life  of  its  writers.    We  see 
them  in  their  habit  as  they  lived,  at  the  club,  in  the  coffee- 
house, in  the  street,  in  the  drawing-room.    It  was  this  com- 
mon, daily,  rather  mundane  life  in  which  they  were  most  in- 
terested and  of  which  they  wrote.    They  keep  back  nothing. 
We  are  shown  their  follies,  their  vices,  their  charities.    We 
come  to  have  a  real  acquaintance  with  them.     Don't  you 
know  Dick  Steele  and  the  eminently  worthy  and  decorous 
Mr.  Joseph  Addison  as  well  as  you  know  your  neighbor? 
Haven't  we  heard  nervous,  wiry  little  Mr.  Pope  recite  his 
famous  verses  about  Miss  Fermor's  hair?     And  it  seems 
only  the  other  day  that  we  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  great  Dr. 
Swift  as  his  chairman  set  down  the  beetle-browed  Doctor 
in  his  gown  and  bands  at  my  Lord  Treasurer's  door.    And 
herein  resides  a  great  part  of  the  charm  which  most  readers 
find  in  the  study  of  this  period.    Here  is  a  little  group  of 
writers,  all  living  within  a  mile  of  each  other  in  town;  all 
interested  in  the  same  things;  with  one  exception — Defoe 
— all  personally  acquainted  with  each  other;  and  they  take 
us  into  their  confidence ;  after  a  little  they  come  to  have  an 
interest  for  us  largely  independent  of  the  purely  literary 
value  of  their  books.    We  care  more  for  the  men,  indeed, 
than  we  care  for  their  books;  or  rather,  we  care  for  their 
books  chiefly  because  they  introduce  us  so  delightfully  to  the 
men.     And  to  know  the  Queen  Anne  literature  it  is  first 
necessary  to  get  on  familiar  terms  with  the  Queen  Anne 
men. 

Such,  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  sketch  them  in  this 
rapid  way,  I  conceive  to  have  been  the  chief  characteristics 
of  the  age  of  Anne,  and  of  the  literature  it  produced:  a 
practical,  reasoning,  mundane  temper;  a  deficiency  of  emo- 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE     155 

tion  and  of  imagination;  a  distrust  of  enthusiasm  and  all  ill- 
regulated  action,  and  a  corresponding  confidence  in  sense 
and  judgment;  a  remarkable  interest  in  all  political  and 
social  matters.  As  a  result,  a  clear  and  idiomatic  prose  con- 
cerning itself  mostly  with  matters  of  immediate,  daily  in- 
terest; a  poetry  finished,  pointed,  urbane;  and  everywhere 
a  disposition  to  regulate  life  in  accordance  with  reasoned 
standards,  and  to  give  to  it  the  moderation  and  grace  of 
good  society. 

This  general  temper,  of  course,  changed  very  rapidly 
alter  the  middle  of  the  century;  indeed,  we  may  see  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  Queen  Anne  period  some  indications 
of  that  reaction  which  at  the  close  of  the  century  culminated 
in  a  revolution  in  all  departments  of  thought.  Let  me 
note,  in  a  single  word,  one  or  two  of  these  marks  of 
reaction. 

One  is  a  reaction  from  the  hard  and  practical  sense  of 
the  age  to  sentimentalism;  an  affectation  of  sentiment  and 
emotion  to  take  the  place  of  the  real;  and  this  in  different 
kinds  of  literature  and  in  varied  ways.  It  may  be  seen,  for 
instance,  in  Young's  poetry,  where,  without  a  ripple  of  real 
emotion,  there  is  a  constant  tumid  swell  and  roll  of  mere  dec- 
lamation, pompous  reflections  that  are  utterly  dreary.  The 
Sight  Thoughts  is  at  once  the  hollowest  and  the  most 
resonant  of  poems. 

Contemporary  with  Young's  work  and  Pope's  latest 
writing  was  Hervey's  Meditations  Among  the  Tombs;  it  is 
now  so  entirely  forgotten  that  Mr.  Gosse  in  his  History  of 
Eighteenth  Century  Literature  doesn't  even  deign  to 
mention  it;  but  it  is  said  to  have  been  the  most  popular  book 
of  the  century,  no  less  than  seventeen  editions  having  been 
issued  in  seventeen  years.  Any  readers  of  this  generation 
who  have  looked  into  it  have  probably  been  surprised  to  find 
it  one  of  the  most  florid  of  books,  full  of  sophomoric  dec- 
lamations of  the  very  worst  kind,  and  written  in  a  tone  of 
unctuous  pathos  very  unedifying.  In  fiction  a  similar  manner 
may  be  seen.  Fielding  represents  the  sturdy  common  sense 
of   the   age,   but    Richardson   is   morbidly  sentimental,    and 


156  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Richardson  was  the  more  popular.  Sterne,  a  half  generation 
later,  is  sentimentalism  incarnate. 

The  other  mark  of  reaction  I  note  is  a  growing  dislike 
for  the  stifling  air  and  the  prim  conventionalities  of  city 
life.  Now  and  then  a  man  begins  to  look  outside  the  town. 
Before  the  death  of  Pope  one  may  already  hear  some  first 
words  of  that  new  gospel  of  nature  so  soon  to  be  preached 
by  Rousseau.  Indeed,  even  Dryden  had  some  momentary 
moods  of  fanciful  admiration  for  that  ideal  age  of  nature 
and  freedom, 

When  wild  in  woods  the  noble  savage  ran, 

as  his  line  has  it.  Pope  had  succeeded  in  writing  the  worst 
nature  poetry  in  the  world,  and  was  only  prevented  by  some 
merciful  special  providence  from  attempting  what  he  called 
"Indian  Pastorals." 

And  already  as  early  as  1726  we  can  see  through  all  the 
academic  diction  of  Thomson  some  of  the  beginnings  of 
the  vision  and  sympathy  which  by  the  close  of  the  century 
were  to  find  full  expression  in  the  poetry  of  Cowper  and 
Burns,  and  of  that  greatest  of  all  poets  of  nature, — Words- 
worth. 


THE  LITERATURE  OF  THE  AGE  OF 
QUEEN  ANNE 

II 

POLITICS,    PARTIES,    AND    PERSONS 

One  of  Mr.  Addison's  pleasant  gossiping  papers  in  the 
Spectator  begins  thus: 

About  the  middle  of  last  winter  I  went  to  see  an  opera  at  the 
theatre  in  Hay  Market,  where  I  could  not  but  take  notice  of  two 
parties  of  very  fine  women,  that  had  placed  themselves  in  the  oppo- 
site side  boxes,  and  seemed  drawn  up  in  a  kind  of  battle  array  one 
against  another.  After  a  short  survey  of  them,  I  found  they  were 
patched  differently;  the  faces  on  one  hand  being  spotted  on  the  right 
side  of  the  forehead,  and  those  upon  the  other  on  the  left.  I 
quickly  perceived  that  they  cast  hostile  glances  upon  one  another; 
and  that  their  patches  were  placed  in  those  different  situations,  as 
party  signals  to  distinguish  friends  from  foes.  In  the  middle  boxes, 
between  these  two  opposite  bodies,  were  several  ladies  who  patched 
indifferently  on  both  sides  of  their  faces,  and  seemed  to  sit  there  with 
no  other  intention  but  to  see  the  opera.  Upon  inquiry  I  found, 
that  the  body  of  Amazons  on  my  right  hand  were  Whigs,  and  those 
on  my  left  Tories:  and  that  those  who  had  placed  themselves  in  the 
middle  boxes  were  a  neutral  party,  whose  faces  had  not  yet  declared 
themselves.  These  last,  however,  as  I  afterwards  found,  diminished 
daily,  and  took  their  party  with  one  side  or  the  other;  insomuch  that 
I  observed  in  several  of  them,  the  patches,  which  were  before  dis- 
persed equally,  are  now  all  gone  over  to  the  Whig  or  Tory  side  of 
the  face.  The  censorious  say  that  the  men,  whose  hearts  are  aimed 
at,  are  very  often  the  occasions  that  one  part  of  the  face  is  thus 
dishonoured,  and  lies  under  a  kind  of  disgrace,  while  the  other  is  so 
much  set  off  and  adorned  by  the  owner;  and  that  the  patches  turn 
to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  according  to  the  principles  of  the  man 
who  is  most  in  favour.  But  whatever  may  be  the  motives  of  a  few 
fantastical  coquettes,  who  do  not  patch  for  the  public  good  so  much 
as  for  their  own  private  advantage,  it  is  certain,  that  there  are 
several  women  of  honour,  who  patch  out  of  principle,  and  with  an 
eye  to  the  interest  of  their  country.  Nay,  I  am  informed  that  some 
of  them  adhere  so  steadfastly  to  their  party,  and  are  so  far  from 
sacrificing  their  zeal  for  the  public  to  their  passion  for  any  particular 

157 


158  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

person,  that  in  a  late  draught  of  marriage  articles  a  lady  has  stipu- 
lated with  her  husband,  that  whatever  his  opinions  are,  she  shall  be 
at  liberty  to  patch  on  which  side  she  pleases. 

In  this  account  of  an  odd  mixture  of  fashion  and  politics 
I  suppose  Mr.  Addison's  playful  humor  has  not  exaggerated 
the  facts  at  all,  for  there  is  abundant  evidence  to  show  how 
thoroughly  the  society  of  Queen  Anne's  time  interested  it- 
self in  party  politics,  divided  itself  up  in  accordance  with 
party  sympathies,  and  how  all  literature,  gossip,  and  even 
fashion  were  colored  by  party  prejudice  or  preference.  A 
large  portion  of  the  literature  of  the  time  is  avowedly  and 
exclusively  political.  It  is  concerned,  moreover,  with  the 
details  of  party  politics;  very  seldom  does  any  of  the  politi- 
cal writing  of  the  age,  even  the  best  of  it,  like  Swift's,  rise 
into  the  region  of  general  principles.  The  writing  of  Swift 
never  has  the  large  wisdom  of  such  a  man  as  Burke;  it  is 
concerned  rather  with  the  immediate  questions  of  the  hour, 
with  personal  and  partisan  questions,  and  does  not  often 
bring  to  their  solution  the  wider  truths  of  economics  or  gov- 
ernment. So,  too,  the  personal  careers  of  all  these  men  de- 
pended intimately  upon  the  changing  fortunes  of  the  parties 
to  which  they  belonged.  Defoe,  Steele,  Addison,  Swift, — 
the  position  and  the  work  of  every  one  of  these  men  de- 
pended, at  some  of  the  most  decisive  junctures  of  their  lives, 
upon  the  ups  and  downs  of  party  politics.  It  seems  desir- 
able, therefore,  that,  at  the  very  outset  of  any  study  of  these 
men  and  their  writings,  we  should  call  freshly  to  mind  the 
course  of  party  politics  during  the  reign  of  Anne,  sketching 
rapidly  the  topics  and  the  persons  most  prominent  in  the 
political  movements  of  the  time. 

The  writers  of  Queen  Anne's  time  all  range  themselves 
as  either  Whigs  or  Tories.  But  when  we  ask  ourselves,  what 
were  the  differences  between  them,  what  were  the  questions 
they  disputed  so  warmly,  we  find  it  not  so  easy  to  answer. 
We  cannot  discover  any  real  question  at  issue  between  the 
two  parties.  Each  goes  on  abusing  the  other,  but  one  cannot 
exactly  understand  the  charges.  The  truth  is,  I  suppose,  that 
there  were  really  no  clear  principles  at  issue  between  the 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE  159 

two  parties.  The  questions  that  once  divided  them  had 
been  pretty  much  settled  by  the  logic  of  events;  and  yet  the 
two  parties  lived  on,  divided  by  tradition,  by  differences 
upon  matters  of  expediency,  and  by  personal  rivalries  for 
place  and  power.  It  is  very  often  so,  you  know,  in  political 
history.  When  a  great  political  party  has  settled  one  issue, 
it  doesn't  die,  but  looks  about  for  another;  and  between  the 
settlement  of  the  old  issue  and  the  discovery  of  a  new  one, 
there  is  usually  an  interval  during  which  party  lines  are 
vaguely  drawn,  and  you  can  hardly  tell  what  principles  are 
at  stake. 

But  it  is  to  be  noted  that  this  is  just  the  time  when  parti- 
san controversy  is  sure  to  be  most  active  and  rancorous. 
For  being  really  pretty  much  agreed  as  to  principles,  the 
parties  have  to  transfer  the  contest  to  persons,  and  personal 
controversy  in  politics  as  everywhere  else  is  the  most  bitter 
of  all  controversies.  Then,  too,  at  a  time  when  parties  are 
not  widely  divided,  persons  can  change  sides,  if  it  serve 
their  own  interest  to  do  so,  without  much  change  of  principle 
or  doctrine;  and  such  desertion  always  provokes  bitter  cen- 
sure, censure  all  the  more  bitter  because  the  desertion  can 
be  plausibly  defended.  Dean  Swift,  for  instance,  once  said 
in  his  own  paper,  the  Examiner,  "Let  any  one  examine  a 
reasonable  honest  man  of  either  side,  upon  those  opinions  in 
religion  and  government,  which  both  parties  daily  buffet 
each  other  about,  he  shall  hardly  find  one  material  point  in 
difference  between  them."  And  yet  Dean  Swift  himself  was 
the  most  terrible  of  party  writers,  and  by  almost  all  the 
Whigs  was  cursed  as  a  renegade  for  a  change  of  party 
which  he  could  readily  and  effectively  defend. 

But  while  there  were  no  very  clear  questions  of  con- 
troversy between  the  Whigs  and  Tories  of  Queen  Anne's 
time,  it  was  still  true  that  these  two  parties  represented,  as 
two  great  parties  in  a  state  almost  always  do,  two  attitudes 
of  the  human  mind  on  public  affairs ;  the  conservative  and  the 
radical;  one  represents  motion,  the  other  check;  one  holds 
to  that  which  is  old,  the  other  wants  what  is  new;  one  repre- 
sents authority,  the  other  liberty.     Both   are  necessary  al- 


160  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ways,  and  it  is  in  the  due  equilibrium  of  power  between  them 
that  the  safety  of  the  State  consists.  The  Tory  party  was 
the  conservative  party;  the  Whig,  the  progressive. 

But  to  be  more  specific,  the  principal  subjects  on  which 
parties  had  once  actively  differed,  and  still  continued  to 
differ  in  theory  in  Anne's  time,  were  two.  The  first  was  the 
nature  of  the  monarchy  and  its  relation  to  the  other  parts 
of  the  government.  The  extreme  Tories  held  that  the  King 
had  a  divine  right  to  his  throne,  by  virtue  of  his  hereditary 
succession;  and  that  this  right  was  indefeasible,  and  im- 
plied the  duty  of  unconditional  obedience  from  the  subject. 
The  extreme  Whigs  held  that  the  King  was  purely  the  crea- 
tion of  the  people,  and  held  his  office  by  act  of  Parliament. 
But  then  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  find  many  such  ex- 
treme Whigs  as  these,  or  many  such  extreme  Tories ;  and  be- 
tween these  extremes  of  opinion  there  was  room  for  num- 
berless grades  of  approximates,  and  most  people  didn't 
trouble  themselves  much  about  it.  The  second  and  much 
more  important  subject  of  difference  was  the  relation  of  the 
Church  to  the  State  and  to  Dissent.  The  Tories  were 
mostly  Churchmen  and  held  that  the  interest  of  the  Church 
and  religion  demanded  more  constant  and  detailed  attention 
from  the  State,  and  more  stringent  measures  to  repress  dis- 
sent. They  believed  in  a  close  and  thorough  union  between 
Church  and  State,  and  said,  not  unreasonably,  that  this 
would  be  impossible  if  the  offices  of  the  State  were  given 
to  those  who  were  not  members  of  the  Church.  They  al- 
ways called  themselves  by  preference  the  Church  party; 
Queen  Anne  never  called  them  anything  else.  The  Whigs, 
on  the  other  hand,  though  many  of  them  were  good  Church- 
men, apprehended  less  danger  from  Dissent  and  were  more 
liberal  towards  it.  It  was  to  the  Whig  party  that  all  the 
Dissenters  belonged. 

There  was  another  difference  between  these  two  parties, 
that  was  quite  as  important  as  any  speculative  difference  of 
opinion,  and  that  was  growing  more  important  every  year. 
The  most  significant  social  fact  of  the  time  is  the  growth  of 
a  great  middle  commercial  class  who  were  coming  to  con- 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE  161 

trol  the  rapidly  increasing  trade  of  England,  getting  wealth 
fast,  and  filling  up  the  towns.  At  the  bottom  of  much  po- 
litical controversy  between  1700  and  1750  was  the  undefined 
jealousy  between  this  class  and  the  landed  class.  It  was 
trade  against  land;  old  aristocracy  against  new  wealth;  town 
against  country.  Now  this  commercial  class  almost  to  a 
man  were  Whigs;  the  landed  gentry  and  their  dependents, 
country  squires  and  parsons  to  a  man,  were  Tories.  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley,  you  know,  is  a  good  Tory;  you  remem- 
ber his  indignant  outburst  in  Westminster  Abbey  when  they 
showed  him  the  effigy  of  an  English  king  the  head  of  which 
had  been  stolen — "Some  Whig,  I'll  warrant  you;  you  ought 
to  lock  up  your  Kings  better,  they'll  carry  off  the  body  too, 
if  you  don't  take  care."  And  if  you've  read  Mr.  Addison's 
Freeholder  you  will  recall  the  Tory  foxhunter  who  rode  into 
the  country  one  day  with  Mr.  Addison,  pulled  up  at  the 
inn  of  his  own  village,  whistled  out  his  landlord  and  intro- 
duced him  to  Mr.  Addison  as  a  very  good  man  who  was, 
to  be  sure,  so  busy  he  hadn't  time  to  go  to  church,  but 
had  helped  pull  down  two  or  three  meeting-houses.  A 
very  happy  shire  it  was,  said  the  jolly  foxhunter,  in  his 
account  he  gave  of  it  while  supper  was  a-getting, — scarce 
a  Presbyterian  in  it. 

Supper  was  no  sooner  served  in,  than  he  took  occasion  from  a 
shoulder  of  mutton  that  lay  before  us,  to  cry  up  the  plenty  of 
England,  which  would  be  the  happiest  country  in  the  world,  pro- 
vided we  would  live  within  ourselves.  Upon  which  he  expatiated 
on  the  inconveniences  of  trade,  that  carried  from  us  the  commod- 
ities of  our  country,  and  made  a  parcel  of  upstarts  as  rich  as  men 
of  the  most  ancient  families  of  England. 

Needless  to  say  Mr.  Addison  was  a  Whig;  he  manages 
afterwards,  you  remember,  to  bring  his  foxhunter  up  to  town 
and  convert  him. 

What  the  attitude  of  these  two  parties  toward  each 
other  was  at  the  opening  of  the  reign  of  Anne,  and  how 
they  came  into  that  attitude  we  may  see  by  a  moment's 
reference  to  some  of  the  familiar  facts  of  the  preceding 
reigns.     The  two  parties  were  really  created   (forty  years 


1 62  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

before  Anne  came  to  the  throne)  by  the  Act  of  Uniformity 
in  1662, — that  act  by  which  the  possibility  of  uniting  a  vast 
majority  of  all  Englishmen  into  one  broad,  liberal,  national 
Church  was  lost  forever.  The  Act  of  Uniformity,  you  re- 
member, required  of  every  minister  an  unqualified  assent  to 
the  whole  of  the  Prayer  Book,  and  enforced  it  upon  all  pub- 
lic worship  whatsoever;  and  by  a  further  clause  it  exacted  of 
all  ministers,  as  a  condition  of  retaining  orders,  a  solemn 
profession  of  belief  that  it  was  unlawful  for  any  cause  what- 
soever to  take  up  arms  against  the  Crown.  This  act  threw 
one  fifth  of  all  the  clergy  out  of  their  livings  in  a  single  day; 
united  Presbyterians  and  Independents,  fusing  all  Dissenters 
into  one  solid  body  against  the  Church  and  the  extravagant 
prerogatives  of  the  Crown.  Thus  we  have  the  nuclei  of  two 
parties,  one  composed  of  extreme  Churchmen  putting  into 
their  creed  very  high  notions  of  the  nature  of  the  monarchy; 
and  the  other  composed  of  moderate  Churchmen  with  the 
whole  body  of  Dissenters. 

The  two  parties  were  solidified  by  the  agitation  over 
the  Exclusion  Bill.  King  Charles  II  hadn't  any  religion  to 
speak  of,  and  didn't  want  any;  but  he  did  want  a  deal  of 
money;  and  when  his  Parliaments  were  very  slow  to  give  it 
to  him  and  very  anxious  to  find  out  what  he  did  with  it,  he 
went  to  the  most  Christian  King,  Louis  XIV  of  France,  for 
it.  But  if  King  Charles  had  no  religion,  his  brother  James 
had;  he  was  an  avowed  and  zealous  Roman  Catholic,  and 
as  Charles  had  no  legitimate  children,  was  like  to  be  King 
of  England  soon.  That  was  the  outlook, — Englishmen  re- 
duced already  by  the  pusillanimity  of  their  king  to  a  position 
of  dependence  upon  Roman  Catholic  France,  and  with  the 
prospect  just  before  them  of  having  a  Romish  king  them- 
selves. In  those  circumstances  the  agitation  that  arose  in 
favor  of  the  Bill  to  exclude  James  from  the  succession  to 
the  throne  was  such  as  England  had  never  seen  before.  Pe- 
tition after  petition  urging  the  Bill  poured  in  from  the  party 
of  moderate  Churchmen  and  Dissenters,  for  all  hated  and 
dreaded  Rome  and  France  more  than  they  hated  and 
dreaded  anything  else.  But  what  should  the  Church  party 
say?    How  could  they,  for  any  cause,  consistently  advocate 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE   163 

the  exclusion  of  the  lawful  heir  from  the  throne  that  would 
belong  to  him?  There  was  but  a  step  between  excluding  the 
king  of  to-morrow  and  deposing  the  king  of  to-day.  The 
latter  was  not  only  treason  but  sacrilege,  violation  of  the 
law  of  God  as  well  as  the  law  of  man;  was  not  the  former 
something  very  like  it?  From  this  party,  therefore,  came 
an  equal  multitude  of  documents  formally  declaring  their 
abhorrence  of  these  new  doctrines  as  subversive  of  the  true 
idea  of  the  monarchy,  and  as  ruinous  alike  to  Church  and 
State.  The  rival  parties  were  commonly  known  as  Petition- 
ers and  Abhorrers,  but  these  awkward  terms  soon  gave  way 
to  the  shorter  slang  names  of  Whig  and  Tory. 

But  the  Tory  party  was  hardly  formed  before  it  found 
the  ground  cut  out  from  under  its  feet  by  the  Revolution  of 
1688.  James  the  King  by  grace  of  God,  to  whom  resistance 
was  unlawful,  was  gone  on  his  travels;  ignominiously  fled, 
and,  by  aid  of  a  fishing-boat,  got  over  to  France.  Alive,  well 
and  sound,  and  calling  himself  King  of  England  still,  but  un- 
fortunately for  all  practical  purposes  of  kingship  not  at  all 
usable  now.  What  then?  Was  he  to  be  recognized  as  king 
still,  and  England  to  get  on  without  sight  of  any  monarch 
for  a  time?  Hardly  a  practicable  scheme  that, — especially 
since  it  seemed  probable  that  his  only  son,  a  stout  infant  of 
a  few  months,  who  would  have  a  divine  right  to  the  throne 
after  him,  would  grow  up  as  bad  a  Catholic  as  his  father, — 
yet,  when  it  came  to  a  settlement  of  the  matter,  nine  Tories 
out  of  every  ten  in  the  House  of  Commons  could  see  no 
better  way  to  fit  their  principles  to  the  facts. 

Here  was  James'  eldest  daughter,  Mary,  with  her  hus- 
band, William,  on  the  spot.  If  that  four  months'  infant  were 
not  the  son  of  James, — and  the  Tories  tried  hard  to  believe 
he  wasn't, — why  then  perhaps  Mary  might  take  the  crown 
which  by  a  convenient  fiction  her  father  might  be  said  to 
have  abdicated.  But  Mary  wouldn't  take  it  alone;  there  was 
no  help  for  it;  it  was  either  no  king  at  all  just  now  or  this 
Dutch  William  who  had  no  divine  right  to  anything  in  Eng- 
land except  his  wife,  Mary.  To  this  the  Whig  party  was 
urging  them;  to  this  they  had  to  come.  William  was  made 
King  of  England  by  statute  of  Parliament. 


i64  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

There  is  nothing  spectacular  in  a  revolution  like  this  in 
which  no  powder  is  burnt  and  no  blood  is  spilt,  and  which 
might  seem  to  consist  principally  in  King  James  going 
out  of  the  back  door  of  Whitehall  and  King  William  coming 
in  at  the  front;  but  it  meant  the  practical  refutation  of  one 
whole  set  of  political  ideas,  and  final  decision  that  the  power 
of  the  people  is  supreme,  and  the  King  is  only  their  chief 
minister. 

It  might  have  been  supposed  that  the  Tory  party  would 
have  little  further  reason  for  existence,  now  that  the 
doctrines  had  been  so  completely  refuted  by  the  logic  of 
events.  But  you  know  men  by  no  means  give  up  their  prin- 
ciples as  soon  as  they  find  they  will  not  work.  If  our  prin- 
ciples come  into  conflict  with  facts,  why  so  much  the  worse 
for  the  facts.  So  it  was  here.  Some  few  of  the  Tories,  es- 
pecially among  the  clergy,  consistently  refused  to  take  the 
oath  of  allegiance  to  the  new  king  at  all;  some  satisfied 
their  consciences  by  ingenious  mental  distinctions  between  a 
king  de  facto  and  a  king  de  jure;  and  a  good  many  took  the 
attitude  of  the  Vicar  of  Bray:  but  the  Tory  party  still  re- 
mained a  solid  center  of  opposition  to  William  all  through 
his  reign.  Plain  country  folk  who  didn't  understand  much 
of  politics  always  had  a  vague  notion  that  the  present  con- 
dition of  things  was  but  a  temporary  arrangement,  and 
that  sometime  the  King  must  come  to  his  own  again.  It 
took  seventy-five  years  to  get  that  quite  out  of  the  heads  of 
the  English  people. 

And  this  Tory  opposition  constantly  strengthened  dur- 
ing the  later  years  of  William's  reign.  For  William  though 
a  wise  and  just,  was  hardly  a  popular  king.  He  was  cold 
and  phlegmatic;  he  was  a  Dutchman;  men  said  he  was  fight- 
ing the  battles  of  his  own  country  and  taking  English  men 
and  money  to  do  it  with.  So  the  Tory  party  gradually 
gained  in  influence,  until  during  the  last  year  of  his  life  they 
got  into  a  majority  and  were  able  to  manage  him  about  as 
they  pleased.  Meantime,  the  old  King  James  had  given  up 
the  struggle  and  was  slowly  dying  in  France;  William's 
wife,  Mary,  was  dead,  and  all  parties  were  agreed  that 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE  165 

after  the  death  of  William  the  other  daughter  of  James, 
Anne,  should  come  to  the  throne. 

This  was  the  state  of  affairs  the  year  before  the  acces- 
sion of  Anne,  when  suddenly  the  great  War  of  the  Spanish 
Succession  broke  out.  The  King  of  Spain,  a  decrepit  and 
half-witted  old  rake,  was  dying  without  heirs.  Who  was  to 
be  King  of  Spain  after  him?  A  famous  treaty  to  which  most 
of  the  great  nations  of  Europe  were  parties  provided  that, 
in  this  event,  the  crown  of  Spain  should  go  to  a  prince  of 
the  House  of  Austria;  but  on  his  death-bed  the  old  King 
was  induced  by  somebody  to  make  a  will  giving  his  whole 
dominion  to  Philip  of  Anjou,  who  was  the  grown-up  grand- 
son of  the  great  Louis  XIV  of  France.  Would  Louis,  in 
spite  of  his  treaties,  accept  the  will,  unite  the  crowns  of 
France  and  Spain  and  make  himself  master  of  Europe? — 
all  Europe  was  waiting  to  see;  it  had  not  long  to  wait. 
Louis  received  the  Spanish  ambassador  one  day  in  the  great 
audience  room  at  Versailles  with  the  famous  words,  "There 
are  no  more  Pyrenees."  And  all  Europe  was  up  in  arms 
in  a  week — all  but  England.  William  was  in  agony;  the 
work  of  his  life  was  undone;  he  entreated,  he  stormed  even; 
but  the  Tory  party  had  him  in  their  power  and  they  didn't 
want  any  more  of  William's  Dutch  wars. 

But  just  then  Louis  made  a  mistake;  after  the  death  of 
the  old  King,  James,  he  formally  proclaimed  his  young  son 
James,  the  Pretender,  as  King  of  England,  and  pledged  him 
his  support.  This  was  of  course  to  declare  war  on  England, 
and  in  self-defense  England  must  resist.  William  and  the 
Whigs  were  delighted;  the  Tories  reluctantly  assented  and 
the  great  war  began.  On  the  one  side  was  France,  with  a 
little  help  from  Bavaria  and  from  Spain;  on  the  other,  Eng- 
land, Holland,  Austria,  Savoy,  and  the  rest  of  Spain.  With 
the  very  opening  of  hostilities  William  died,  and  our  Queen 
Anne  came  to  the  throne.  That  was  the  way  her  reign 
began:  the  Tories  in  power;  Anne  herself,  so  far  as  so 
flaccid  a  person  could  be  said  to  have  any  politics,  a  Tory 
too;  a  Tory  ministry  and  a  Tory  queen  with  a  great  Whig 
war  on  their  hands. 


i66  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

This  Queen  Anne — who  was  she?  Let  me  confess  that 
the  picture  of  Anne  that  lives  in  my  memory  and  seems  to 
me  really  suggestive  of  her  character  is  drawn  not  from 
statue  or  portrait,  but  from  a  much  more  vulgar  source. 
Among  the  numerous  chapels  in  Westminster  Abbey  is  a 
little  lumber  room  in  which  are  locked  up  a  number  of  wax 
figures  of  the  kings  and  queens  of  England.  Made  first,  at 
the  death  of  the  originals,  I  believe,  and  after  the  funeral 
pomps  were  over,  set  up  here  and  shown  to  the  public  at 
a  penny  a  head, — till  some  half  century  and  more  ago,  when 
the  dean  turned  the  key  on  them.  Well,  Anne  is  there  in 
her  habit  as  she  lived,  portly,  stout,  in  large  red  health, 
though  with  a  somewhat  puffed  and  helpless  look.  This  is 
the  Anne  of  my  imagination, — a  sluggish,  inefficient,  torpid 
soul,  able  to  animate  but  feebly  so  much  royal  avoirdupois. 
Seldom  has  fortune  entrusted  to  so  small  a  mind  the  conduct 
of  so  great  affairs. 

It  is  impossible  to  throw  any  pride  or  luster  of  royalty 
about  her.  No  brilliancy  of  parts  or  statesmanship,  had  she 
herself,  and  she  had  no  appreciation  of  them  in  others. 
She  was  without  humor  and  without  taste.  She  had  no 
lightness  or  versatility  of  mind.  One  thinks  of  her  as  a  fat, 
dull,  heavy,  generally  good-tempered  body.  Her  temper, 
however,  wasn't  always  of  the  best.  Meekly  stupid  when 
she  was  in  good  humor  and  sulkily  stupid  when  she  was  in 
bad  humor,  says  Macaulay  in  his  smart  way.  She  had  little 
judgment  to  guide  her  in  the  choice  of  her  advisers.  She 
chose  friends  without  discrimination  and  discarded  them  on 
ignorant  prejudice.  Like  dull  people  generally  she  had  an 
immense  regard  for  decorum,  and  once,  it  is  said,  dismissed 
a  minister  because  he  came  into  her  presence  in  a  tie-wig 
instead  of  a  full-bottom.  Moreover,  as  is  often  the  case 
with  stupid  people,  she  could  be  invincibly  obstinate  on 
occasion;  and  the  very  thickness  of  her  intellect  made  it  im- 
possible to  dislodge  her  prejudices.  She  was  kind  to  her 
friends,  but  as  Swift  said,  she  never  had  a  stock  of  amity 
sufficient  for  more  than  one  person  at  a  time. 

Yet  Anne  always  had  a  kind  of  popularity  with  the  Eng- 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE   167 

lish  people,  who  never  came  very  near  her.  She  was  an  Eng- 
lishwoman for  one  thing,  and  the  people  were  tired  of  a 
Dutch  monarch.  "I  know  my  own  heart  to  be  entirely  Eng- 
lish," she  said  in  her  first  speech  from  the  throne, — or  some 
minister  was  bright  enough  to  make  her  say  it.  Then  she 
had  those  homely  domestic  virtues  which  the  English,  to 
their  credit,  so  generally  reverence.  The  one  person  in  Eng- 
land duller  than  she,  her  husband,  Prince  George  of  Den- 
mark, was  a  fat,  incorrigible,  blubbering  little  drunkard, 
who  hadn't  wit  enough  when  occasionally  sober  to  make 
either  friends  or  enemies;  but  Anne  loved  him  as  if  he  had 
been  St.  George  himself,  and  as  his  asthma  and  dropsy 
increased  and  the  little  man,  who  was  over  sixty,  grew  daily 
tatter  and  scantier  of  breath,  Anne  watched  by  him  in  an 
agony  of  suspense,  and,  when  he  dropped  out  of  existence 
and  nobody  else  in  England  cared  or  hardly  knew,  poor 
Anne  was  inconsolable.  Her  thirteen  children  were  all  dead 
before  she  became  queen,  and  a  good  many  people  felt  a 
sympathy  for  the  lonesome  and  childless  old  lady. 

Then,  too,  though  she  had  some  rather  questionable 
habits,  she  really  meant  to  be  pious.  The  one  clear  motive 
that  it  is  possible  to  trace  in  her  conduct  is  a  love  for  the 
English  Church  in  which  she  had  been  brought  up.  It  was 
this  that  attached  her  to  the  Tory  party,  and  that  party 
already  knew  nothing  would  so  influence  the  Queen  as  the 
cry,  "The  Church  is  in  danger." 

This  was  the  Queen  of  England.  But  of  course  such  a 
queen  as  this  didn't  really  govern  England.  The  real  sover- 
eign of  England  during  the  first  eight  years  of  Anne's  reign, 
was  her  great  general,  the  Duke  of  Marlborough.  The  war 
put  this  great  duke  virtually  at  the  head  of  affairs  at  once. 
I  think  the  Duke  of  Marlborough  was  the  greatest  military 
genius  England  ever  produced — greater  even  than  Welling- 
ton. He  had  the  best  marshals  of  France  against  him,  but 
he  never  lost  a  battle.  The  great  English  general  was  really 
commander-in-chief  of  all  the  allies  and  the  one  man  whom 
France  dreaded.  For  fifty  years  after  the  war  the  French 
nurses  used  to  frighten  the  children  into  obedience  by  telling 


168  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

them  Marlborough  was  coming.  And  the  Duke  was  a  man 
of  wonderful  fascination  of  manner  and  great  address. 
Men  used  to  say  he  was  as  powerful  in  the  court  as  in  the 
camp.  Certainly  he  exerted  almost  as  much  influence  winters 
when  he  was  at  home  in  Parliament  as  summers  when  he 
was  abroad  in  the  field.  But  he  was  not  a  very  trusty  man, 
I  think.  He  had  played  fast  and  loose  with  James  and 
William  in  a  not  very  manly  way,  and  for  my  part,  I  can 
never  feel  sure  that  all  through  Anne's  reign  he  would  not 
have  changed  sides  or  even  made  himself  useful  to  the  Pre- 
tender if  he  had  been  quite  certain  it  would  have  been  for 
his  own  interest  to  do  so.  The  fault  his  enemies  were  always 
throwing  in  his  teeth  was  his  avarice.  It  is  true  that  the 
great  man  was  very  fond  of  money.  As  the  war  went  on  he 
got  vast  sums :  the  great  palace  of  Blenheim  alone  that  Mr. 
Vanbrugh  built  him  cost  the  government  near  a  million 
pounds ;  but  he  never  got  enough,  and  finally  his  enemies  said 
plausibly,  though  I  think  it  wasn't  quite  true,  that  the  Duke 
of  Marlborough  wanted  to  prolong  the  war  that  he  might 
keep  on  filling  his  pockets.  The  master  of  Europe  was  cer- 
tainly very  careful  of  his  pennies :  the  night  before  the  great 
battle  of  Blenheim  when  he  sat  in  his  tent  with  some  officers 
examining  plans  of  the  field  of  to-morrow's  battle,  and  an 
orderly  brought  in  two  lighted  candles  and  placed  them  on 
the  table,  the  great  general  rose  and  thriftily  snuffed  out 
one  of  them  with  his  finger.  When  later,  in  the  days  of  his 
unpopularity  a  gentleman  who  looked  very  like  him,  was 
mistaken  for  him  on  the  streets  in  London  and  was  like  to 
be  hustled,  he  satisfied  the  mob  by  turning  to  them  and  say- 
ing: "Good  people,  I  can  easily  convince  you  I'm  not  the 
Duke  of  Marlborough;  in  the  first  place,  I  have  only  two 
shillings  about  me;  and  secondly,  they  are  very  much  at 
your  service." 

In  a  great  war  money  is  even  more  necessary  than  men ; 
and  Marlborough  was  very  fortunate  in  that  his  most  in- 
timate friend,  Sidney  Godolphin,  was  at  the  head  of  the 
treasury  and  managed  those  matters  for  him  at  home  while 
Marlborough   fought  battles   abroad.     Godolphin   was   a 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE   169 

rather  heavy,  coarse,  lumbering  sort  of  man,  who  found 
his  most  congenial  pleasure  at  the  cock-pit  and  race-course, 
but  he  was  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  finance  England 
had  ever  seen.  I  don't  know  that  it  has  had  any  greater 
since.  He  was  closely  connected  with  Marlborough,  for  his 
son  had  married  Marlborough's  daughter.  Both  he  and 
Marlborough  were  Tories  when  Anne's  reign  began,  and 
held  the  highest  places  in  her  ministry  for  eight  years. 

But  there  was  one  person  in  England  who  was  more 
powerful  than  the  great  Duke  of  Marlborough.  The  great 
Duke  conquered  Europe,  but  he  was  himself  the  humble 
subject  of  his  wife,  Sarah  Jennings,  Duchess  of  Marlbor- 
ough. One  can  see  that  woman  now  and  almost  hear  her, — 
her  small,  sharp-featured  face,  agile  figure,  alive  to  her 
finger  ends,  and  her  omnipotent  tongue.  For  she  wasn't 
for  softness  famed  and  sweet  submissive  grace,  this  Duchess, 
and  didn't  rule  by  artful  compliance  but  rather  in  et  armis. 
Whether  the  Duke  really  loved  her  or  was  only  afraid  of 
her,  the  world  can  never  quite  make  out;  his  constant  letters 
to  her,  very  devoted  and  very  submissive,  are  among  the 
oddest  things  I  know  of.  At  all  events,  he  was  very  proud 
of  her  and  found  her  services  at  home  for  him  worth  half 
a  dozen  armies.  For  when  Queen  Anne  came  to  the  throne 
this  Duchess  had  been  for  some  years  her  closest  friend. 
They  were  inseparably  intimate.  They  laid  aside  their 
titles  in  their  correspondence  and  the  Queen  was  "My  dear 
Mrs.  Morley"  and  the  Duchess,  "My  dear  Mrs.  Freeman." 
Of  course  in  such  a  friendship  the  Duchess  had  the  best 
of  it.  By  such  a  shrewd  and  commanding  nature  as  hers, 
the  poor  old  Queen  seemed  entirely  manageable.  In  serious 
fact  the  political  history  of  England  for  half  a  dozen  years 
was  decided  by  this  imperious  little  woman  who  stood  be- 
hind the  throne. 

These  then  are  the  persons  most  prominently  in  view 
when  Anne's  reign  began.  For  some  years  the  war  was 
the  absorbing  subject  of  attention.  It  was,  as  I  said  just 
now,  a  somewhat  curious  state  of  affairs.  The  Tories  were 
in  a  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons;  Marlborough  and 


170  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Godolphin,  Tories,  were  at  the  head  of  a  Tory  ministry, 
and  the  Queen  herself  so  far  as  she  was  anything  was  a 
Tory,  while  the  war  was  a  Whig  war.  Yet  the  two  parties 
at  first  were  not  so  very  widely  separated.  The  Tories  did 
not  enter  into  the  war  so  heartily  as  the  Whigs,  yet  they 
recognized  it  as  necessary,  and  both  parties  supported  it. 
But  a  successful  war  is  usually  popular  and  strengthens  the 
party  that  favors  it  most.  When,  therefore,  Marlborough 
began  to  win  his  great  victories,  the  Whigs  began  to  grow 
stronger  at  home,  and  when  an  election  fell  (1705)  just 
after  the  famous  victory  of  Blenheim,  the  Whigs  carried 
it  and  returned  a  large  majority  to  the  House  of  Commons. 
Marlborough  and  Godolphin  were  heartily  in  favor  of  the 
war,  and,  as  they  found  they  couldn't  get  on  without  the 
support  of  the  Whigs,  they  gradually  came  over  from  the 
Tory  to  the  Whig  side,  and  by  1706  were  voting  with  the 
Whigs  regularly.  And  what  was  more,  the  Duchess  of 
Marlborough  went  over  too.  The  Whigs  naturally  didn't 
like  Tories  in  the  ministry;  it  seemed  hard  the  Tories  should 
be  entrusted  with  Whig  measures,  and  get  the  credit  of  a 
victorious  war  which  they  only  went  into  because  they 
couldn't  help  it.  The  Queen  therefore  found  herself  obliged 
to  drop  one  Tory  minister  after  another.  In  1706  she 
put  in  two  that  were  destined  to  become  very  famous  pretty 
soon, — Mr.  Robert  Harley,  and  young  Mr.  Henry  St.  John, 
afterward  to  be  made  Lord  Bolingbroke.  Mr.  Harley  was 
only  a  very  moderate  Tory  and  Mr.  St.  John  was  young 
and  brilliant,  and  the  Queen  hoped  she  might  keep  them 
in  the  ministry.  But  in  1708  the  WThigs  had  another  ma- 
jority in  Parliament  and  the  Whig  ministers,  Marlborough 
and  Godolphin  among  them,  positively  refused  to  serve 
unless  their  Tory  colleagues  were  turned  out,  and  so  Harley 
and  St.  John  had  to  go,  and  for  the  first  time  the  ministry 
was  altogether  Whig.  But  though  the  Whigs  seemed  quite 
successful  in  1708,  in  fact  they  were  nearing  a  total  defeat, 
and  the  most  famous  change  of  ministry  that  ever  happened 
in  England  was  at  hand. 

In  1709  the  war  was  growing  unpopular.     After  eight 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE   171 

years  of  victories,  it  seemed  no  nearer  ending  than  when 
it  began,  and  people  were  beginning  to  believe  that  Marl- 
borough and  the  Whigs  didn't  wish  to  end  it  at  all.  The 
country  land-owners  especially  were  firm  against  it,  for 
they  said  it  made  them  poor  and  the  trading  Whigs  rich. 
So  soon  as  ever  a  town  Whig  could  get  a  thousand  pounds 
together  he  bought  some  of  the  public  securities,  which  of 
course  he  didn't  have  to  pay  any  taxes  on,  while  the  land 
had  to  pay  him  a  handsome  rate  of  interest  every  year. 

They  went  to  war  to  keep  out  the  Pretender;  but  I  sup- 
pose a  good  many  Englishmen  all  through  Anne's  reign 
thought  he  would  be  king  at  last  after  all.  When  Anne's 
last  child  died,  just  before  she  became  queen,  the  Parliament 
had  decided  that  should  she  die  childless,  the  crown  should 
go  to  a  granddaughter  of  her  great-grandfather,  the  Elec- 
tress  Sophia;  now  a  rather  dull  old  lady  of  eighty,  princess 
of  a  tiny  German  state  about  whom  people  knew  or  cared 
nothing;  or  if  she  should  die  before  Anne,  to  her  son, 
George,  about  whom  people  knew  or  cared  even  less.  It 
seemed  a  long  way  to  go  after  a  King  of  England, 
a  poor  place  to  find  one;  and  a  good  many  Tories  who 
didn't  want  to  declare  for  the  Pretender,  wouldn't  have 
been  sorry  to  see  him  in  England  after  Anne  should 
go,  and  were  beginning  to  be  doubtful  about  the  wis- 
dom of  fighting  so  long  to  keep  him  out.  Anne  herself 
was  known  to  have  a  soft  spot  in  her  heart  for  this 
unlucky  half-brother  of  hers,  and  if  he  could  have  changed 
his  religion,  I  think  he  would  have  unquestionably  be- 
come King  of  England.  Then,  too,  the  Tories,  since 
they  had  gone  into  a  minority,  had  discovered  that  the 
Church  was  in  danger.  By  the  famous  Test  Act,  passed 
thirty  years  before,  it  had  been  provided  that  no  person 
could  hold  any  civil  office  who  should  not  take  the  sacrament 
according  to  the  form  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  de- 
clare his  disbelief  in  the  Romish  doctrine  of  transubstantia- 
tion.  The  object  was  of  course  to  shut  out  both  Dissenters 
and  Romanists  from  all  office;  but  it  was  found  that  there 
were  some  Dissenters  whose  consciences  would  allow  them 


172  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

to  take  the  sacrament  now  and  then  from  the  hands  of  an 
English  priest,  and  by  this  occasional  conformity,  qualify 
for  office.  A  bill  to  prevent  such  occasional  conformity, 
as  it  was  called,  was  urged  by  the  Tories,  and,  for  three 
consecutive  sessions  of  Parliament,  it  was  pushed  with  the 
utmost  obstinacy,  and  when  it  was  at  last  found  impos- 
sible to  pass  it,  the  Tories  spread  through  the  country  the 
vague  feeling  that  the  Church  was  being  betrayed  by  the 
Whigs.  Through  the  country  people  all  had  a  dim  notion 
that  something  very  wrong  was  going  on:  there  was  an  end- 
less war  and  it  wasn't  easy  to  say  what  for;  the  Queen  was 
growing  old  and  nobody  knew  what  was  to  come  after  her; 
a  great  many  bad  Whigs  were  in  power,  taxes  were  high, 
and  the  Church  was  in  danger,  so  the  parson  said. 

But  what  I  suppose  had  more  to  do  with  the  change 
of  ministry  was  the  fact  that  Duchess  Sarah  and  the  Queen 
were  not  getting  on  well  together  of  late.  It  seems  a  little 
odd  to  say  that  the  history  of  all  Europe  was  changed 
because  a  stupid  old  woman  quarreled  with  a  snappish 
old  woman;  but  really  it  wasn't  far  from  the  truth.  It 
is  really  surprising  that  the  rupture  didn't  come  sooner.  The 
Queen  had  a  kind  of  dull  decorum  and  stupid  stateliness 
which  were  sorely  tried  by  the  familiarities  of  the  Duchess. 
The  idea  at  last  began  to  soak  into  Queen  Anne's  mind 
that  she  was  being  managed,  and  she  didn't  like  it.  Then 
the  Duchess  made  one  great  mistake.  Among  the  crowd 
of  her  hangers-on  was  a  certain  Abigail  Hill,  some  distant 
poverty-stricken  cousin,  a  mild,  inoffensive,  chirruping  body. 
It  occurred  to  Duchess  Sarah  to  make  this  Abigail  Hill 
of  service  as  a  maid  of  honor.  But  this  Abigail  Hill  had 
a  pair  of  eyes  in  her  head,  a  quick  wit,  and  considerable 
talent  for  back-stairs  politics,  and  being  one  of  those  quiet, 
helpful  bodies  "never  in  the  way  and  never  out  of  the  way," 
she  soon  made  herself  vastly  serviceable  to  Anne.  The 
Queen  found  it  pleasanter  to  manage  a  maid  than  to  be 
managed  by  a  duchess,  and  the  result  was  that  before 
Duchess  Sarah  realized  what  was  doing,  she  found  her- 
self quite  out  of  favor,   and  her  poverty-stricken  cousin, 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE   173 

who  had  by  this  time  been  married  to  a  Mr.  Masham  of 
the  court,  installed  in  her  place.  Now  this  Mrs.  Masham 
was  some  sort  of  relation  of  Mr.  Harley,  the  moderate 
Tory  I  mentioned  a  while  ago;  and  Mr.  Harley  was  not 
slow  to  avail  himself  of  this  opportunity.  The  Queen  was 
tired  of  the  Marlboroughs;  she  was  doubtful  about  the 
war;  she  was  frightened  about  the  Church.  Couldn't  Mrs. 
Masham  find  opportunity  to  advise  her  that  the  safest  way 
would  be  to  dismiss  Marlborough,  get  a  new  ministry,  dis- 
solve the  Parliament,  and  begin  anew?  This  was  in  1709. 
The  Queen  was  slowly  making  up  what  mind  she  had  to  take 
this  advice,  when  an  event  happened  which  made  a  great 
hubbub  of  excitement  over  the  country,  and  hurried  her 
on  to  a  decision.  In  the  fall  of  1709  a  sermon  was  preached 
in  London  by  a  rather  foolish  parson  named  Doctor  Sach- 
everell.  He  was  a  High  Church  minister  of  very  mediocre 
abilities  who  seems  to  have  had  none  too  much  of  learning 
or  piety,  but  made  up  for  both  by  his  assurance;  and  having 
a  good  manner  and  rather  striking  delivery  he  enjoyed  a 
certain  vulgar  popularity.  Preaching  on  what  he  was  pleased 
to  call  the  perils  among  false  brothers  in  the  Church,  this 
man  took  occasion  to  urge  some  of  the  highest  notions  of 
royal  prerogative;  and  to  denounce  in  unmeasured  terms  all 
those  who  didn't  maintain  them.  The  cry  of  "The  Church 
is  in  danger"  had  never  been  sounded  quite  so  shrilly. 

It  was  a  foolish  sermon  and  the  ministry  would  have 
done  best  to  regard  it  as  such  and  let  it  alone.  But  in  an 
evil  moment  they  chose  to  impeach  him  before  the  House 
of  Lords.  It  was  the  spark  that  set  things  ablaze.  The 
Tories  accepted  it  as  a  challenge.  The  clergy  were  indig- 
nant. Sacheverell  posed  as  a  martyr.  The  trial  came  off  in 
1 7  10,  and  London  was  in  a  whirl  over  it.  Sacheverell  was 
attended  by  the  chaplain  of  the  Queen.  The  ladies  had  his 
portrait  in  their  prayer  books  and  on  their  handkerchiefs. 
The  mob  hustled  everybody  who  wouldn't  shout  for  him, 
and  improved  the  opportunity  of  tearing  down  several 
meeting-houses.  In  the  end,  though  he  was  convicted,  his 
penalty  was  only  a  nominal  one,  and  when  the  silly  parson 


174  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

left  London  after  his  trial,  his  journey  into  the  country  was 
a  triumphal  progress  that  set  the  church  bells  ringing  all 
over  England. 

It  was  plain  that  the  Queen  could  make  up  her  mind 
now.  In  the  later  summer  of  1710  she  dissolved  Parlia- 
ment to  call  a  new  one.  And  the  elections  went  over- 
whelmingly Tory  everywhere.  The  Queen  dismissed  the 
Duchess,  who  was  so  indignant  that  she  threw  away  her  gold 
key,  and,  when  she  was  turned  out  of  her  apartments  in  St. 
James,  tore  down  the  mantel  and  carried  off  the  brass 
locks.  Godolphin  had  to  give  up  his  treasurer's  staff  and 
all  the  Whigs  went  out  of  office.  Marlborough  it  wasn't 
so  easy  to  get  on  without,  but  he  lost  his  place  next  year. 
England  had  a  Tory  queen,  a  Tory  ministry,  a  Tory  House 
of  Commons,  and  next  year  to  make  all  complete,  Anne  took 
the  unprecedented  step  of  creating  twelve  new  Tory  peers 
at  a  stroke,  and  thus  made  a  Tory  majority  in  the  Lords  too. 
"Do  you  vote  singly  or  by  your  foreman?"  asked  the 
Whig  Lord  Wharton  when  they  came  into  the  House  for 
the  first  time.  The  revolution  was  now  complete,  the  last 
great  Tory  administration  was  fairly  in.  It  was  this  ad- 
ministration that  remained  in  power  the  remaining  four 
years  of  Anne's  reign,  and  was  the  last  and  only  great 
Tory  ministry  for  more  than  fifty  years. 

At  the  head  of  it  were  two  men  very  different  from  each 
other  and  not  well  adapted  to  work  together, — Robert 
Harley  and  Henry  St.  John,  Viscount  Bolingbroke.  Mr. 
Harley,  whom  Anne  soon  made  Lord  Oxford,  was  a  slow, 
cautious,  good  man  of  business,  honest,  well-disposed,  but 
of  no  statesmanship.  He  made  an  impression  on  people 
by  a  heavy  serious  air  of  wisdom  and  moderation,  but  it 
was  difficult  to  find  out  whether  he  had  any  clear  views  on 
any  subject  or  not.  Before  any  difficult  question  he  had  the 
sage  and  non-committal  air  of  the  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley 
who  thinks  "there's  much  to  be  said  on  both  sides."  Men 
called  him  a  trimmer,  but  the  truth  was  he  never  could 
exactly  make  up  his  own  mind  on  most  matters  of  state. 
Queen  Anne  complained  that  he  seemed  to  go  into  gen- 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE   175 

eralities,  and  she  couldn't  understand  him;  I  suppose  he 
didn't  well  understand  himself.  When  he  and  his  party 
were  out,  he  knew  he  wanted  to  be  in,  and  was  rather 
shrewd  in  his  schemes  to  get  in;  but  once  in,  he  didn't  know 
just  what  to  do  with  the  power  put  into  his  hands.  Then, 
too,  he  was  the  most  dilatory  of  mortals;  the  greatest  pro- 
crastinator  alive,  said  his  best  friend,  Dean  Swift.  He  had 
the  hesitating  caution  of  a  man  who  didn't  fully  know  his 
road.  On  the  question  which  was  now  beginning  to  agitate 
all  minds,  what  was  to  come  after  the  Queen,  he  was  careful 
not  to  commit  himself,  but  waited  for  events. 

The  other  great  minister,  Bolingbroke,  was  the  opposite 
of  all  this.  He  was  an  extreme  Tory,  not  from  principle — 
for  of  principles  he  had  none — but  from  expediency.  He 
was  in  fact  a  Jacobite  and  was  certainly  concerned — no  one 
knew  or  ever  will  know  how  deeply — in  schemes  to  bring 
in  the  Pretender.  He  was  brilliant,  versatile,  rapid,  rather 
than  wise  or  temperate  in  judgment.  In  his  earlier  life  he 
had  made  himself  proficient  in  all  the  fashionable  vices  of 
his  time,  and  rather  prided  himself  on  keeping  them  well 
in  practice,  though  it  cost  him  his  health  and  his  character. 
He  aspired  to  be  the  Alcibiades  of  his  age;  orator,  states- 
man, poet,  gallant,  and  to  shine  in  all  at  once.  He  wrote 
with  equal  flippancy  a  letter  of  intrigue  and  a  dispatch  on 
which  the  fate  of  Europe  depended.  But  such  brilliancy  is 
bought  only  at  the  expense  of  the  sounder  qualities  of  states- 
manship. 

It  was  evident,  at  all  events,  that  two  such  men  as 
Harley  and  Bolingbroke  couldn't  long  get  on  together. 
They  did  not.  The  new  ministry  had  to  do  something  to 
avert  the  danger  to  the  Church  of  which  so  much  had  been 
said  before  they  came  in;  and  so  they  passed  the  act  for- 
bidding occasional  conformity,  and  ordered  fifty  new 
churches  erected  in  London.  They  were  built  by  Wren  and 
Gibbs  and  you  see  the  spires  of  them  wherever  you  go  in 
London  now.  But  their  great  task  was  to  end  the  war.  It 
was  really  for  this  that  they  had  been  elected.  But  to  end 
the  war  wasn't  so  easy  a  matter.    England  was  only  one  of 


176  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

four  great  allied  powers  who  had  been  fighting  France,  and 
none  of  the  other  three  was  ready  for  peace  yet,  so  that 
England  was  forced  into  the  unhandsome  position  of  desert- 
ing her  allies.  Moreover,  now  that  Marlborough  was  dis- 
missed, the  most  dangerous  enemy  of  France  was  out  of  the 
field  and  the  demands  of  France  rose  very  much  :  three  years 
before  Louis  would  have  made  peace  on  almost  any  terms; 
now  he  was  reluctant  and  exacting.  And  more  than  all  this, 
some  of  the  extreme  Tories,  among  whom  probably  was 
Bolingbroke,  as  the  Queen  drew  near  her  end,  thought  it  in- 
creasingly probable  that  the  Pretender  would  come  in  after 
her  death,  and  hesitated  to  put  into  the  articles  of  peace  any 
terms  that  would  make  that  too  difficult  for  him.  The  Tories 
indeed  were  in  an  awkward  position.  If  they  were  true  to 
the  Church,  they  must  keep  him  out.  They  found  it  hard 
to  keep  either  article  of  the  creed  without  breaking  the 
other.  In  such  a  position  of  affairs  most  of  them,  like 
Harley,  thought  it  best  to  proceed  cautiously  and  decide  on  a 
policy  when  forced  to.  They  distrusted  Bolingbroke,  for 
they  knew  he  would  try  to  do  something  brilliant,  and  they 
never  could  tell  what  it  would  be.  And  so  as  the  negotia- 
tions for  peace  dragged  on,  my  Lord  Bolingbroke  and  my 
Lord  Oxford  grew  farther  and  farther  apart.  Bolingbroke 
took  affairs  pretty  much  into  his  own  hands,  and  when  the 
treaty  was  at  last  signed  in  17 13,  the  two  ministers  were 
thoroughly  estranged.  Shrewd  little  Mrs.  Masham,  who 
was  managing  the  Queen,  all  this  time  had  been  choosing 
between  the  ministers.  Her  cousin,  Mr.  Harley,  gave  her 
a  good  deal  of  advice,  but  he  didn't  give  her  much  money; 
but  my  Lord  Bolingbroke,  who  seemed  to  have  a  great  deal 
of  money  and  very  little  conscience  in  the  use  of  it,  had  kept 
her  purse  well  filled,  and  sent  her  brother,  Jack  Hill,  off  on 
a  handsome  expedition  against  Quebec,  where  you  remember 
he  made  a  mess  of  it.  So  Mrs.  Masham  concluded  she 
would  go  with  my  Lord  Bolingbroke. 

In  the  summer  of  17 14  the  poor  old  Queen  was  evi- 
dently near  her  end,  though  no  one  expected  the  end  to  come 
quite  so  suddenly.  "Her  Majesty's  gracious  person  grows  so 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE   177 

stout,"  says  a  contemporary  letter,  "that  she  cannot  take  her 
accustomed  exercise,  while  she  indulges  herself  somewhat 
too  freely  at  table."  She  was  tormented  by  the  wrangling  of 
the  ministers;  she  naturally  liked  the  heavy  FJarley  and  was 
suspicious  of  the  brilliant  Bolingbroke;  but  at  last  urged  on 
by  Mrs.  Masham  and  irritated  by  Harley's  indifference,  she 
surrendered  to  Bolingbroke.  What  should  happen  after  she 
was  gone  was  now  the  question  that  everybody  was  asking 
with  the  feverish  anxiety  that  came  from  the  certainty  that  it 
must  soon  be  answered  one  way  or  the  other.  The  old  Elec- 
tress  Sophia  died  in  the  early  summer  and  George,  the  Elec- 
tor, her  son,  was  now  the  Hanoverian  heir.  The  Tories, 
even  the  moderate  ones  like  Swift,  were  of  the  opinion  that 
before  her  death  the  Tory  or  Church  party  should  be  so 
strongly  entrenched  in  power  that  even  if  the  Elector  should 
come  to  the  throne,  he  would  be  unwilling  to  dispossess 
them;  while  if  the  Pretender  should  succeed,  he  would  be  re- 
quired to  give  full  guarantee  for  the  security  of  the  English 
Church,  although  he  did  not  enter  that  communion  himself. 
But  Harley  was  dilatory,  disinclined  to  positive  or  sweeping 
measures,  distrustful  of  the  more  extreme  Tories,  and  dis- 
trusted by  all  parties.  Bolingbroke,  on  the  other  hand, 
though  of  course  he  still  made  no  open  profession  of  favor 
to  the  Pretender,  had  evidently  come  to  the  conclusion  that 
he  would  come  in,  and  he  made  all  his  calculations  for  that 
event.  He  had  even  designated  the  members  of  the  first  min- 
istry under  the  new  king.  But  his  plans  were  frustrated  at 
the  last  minute. 

On  the  night  of  Tuesday,  the  twenty-sixth  of  July,  17 14, 
there  was  a  long  and  angry  cabinet  meeting.  The  Queen,  it 
is  said,  quarreled  with  Harley;  there  were  high  words,  and 
before  it  was  over,  the  Queen  took  the  white  staff  of  office 
from  Harley  into  her  own  hands,  and  indignantly  dismissed 
him.  That  was  Anne's  last  cabinet  meeting;  the  excitement 
of  it  killed  her.  Next  morning  she  had  a  slight  stroke  of 
apoplexy  and  took  to  her  bed.  From  that  day  to  this  it  is 
said  no  monarch  of  England  has  ever  attended  a  meeting 
of  the  cabinet.     Bolingbroke  was  left  supreme;  it  was  evi- 


178  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

dent  the  crisis  was  only  a  few  days  away.  He  made  out  a 
list  of  new  ministers,  almost  all  Jacobites,  at  the  head  of 
them,  Bishop  Atterbury,  the  rankest  Jacobite  in  London. 
But  they  were  never  to  be  appointed.  The  Queen  was 
stricken  on  Wednesday.  The  country  was  in  an  agony  of 
suspense.  Marlborough,  who  had  been  in  exile,  was  waiting 
in  Ostend  to  do  no  one  knew  what.  Bolingbroke  seemed 
ready.  But  he  was  outwitted  at  last.  Among  the  Tories  was 
a  shrewd,  long-headed  man  who  had  been  watching  things 
and  keeping  still,  the  Duke  of  Shrewsbury.  He  was  much 
liked  of  Anne  lately,  but  Bolingbroke  was  shy  of  him.  Now 
the  white  staff  of  treasurer,  which  the  dying  Queen  had 
taken  from  Oxford  Tuesday  night,  she  had  not  yet  given 
to  any  one  else,  when  on  Friday  morning  a  meeting  of  the 
Privy  Council  was  called.  Then  as  now,  no  councillor  was 
expected  to  attend  unless  he  had  received  a  special  summons, 
though  having  a  legal  right  to  do  so.  Bolingbroke  had 
picked  his  men  and  thought  he  was  sure  of  them  all.  They 
had  hardly  met  out  at  Kensington  and  the  news  of  the 
Queen's  condition  had  just  been  received,  when  the  doors 
were  opened  and  in  walked  two  Whig  noblemen,  Argyle  and 
Somerset,  and  said  that,  knowing  the  danger  of  the  Queen, 
they  had  hastened,  though  not  summoned,  to  render  all  as- 
sistance in  their  power.  The  Duke  of  Shrewsbury,  who  was 
evidently  expecting  them,  arose  quietly  and  thanked  them 
for  their  interest;  and  then  to  the  astonishment  of  the 
Tories,  the  two  Whigs,  who  had  taken  seats,  suggested 
that  in  view  of  the  danger  of  the  Queen,  the  post  of  Lord 
Treasurer  be  immediately  filled,  and  that  the  Duke  of 
Shrewsbury  be  recommended  to  Her  Majesty  for  that  office. 
Astounded  at  the  quiet  assurance  of  these  men,  the  Jacob- 
ites did  not  see  how  to  oppose  it,  and  at  noon  that  day  the 
dying  Queen  placed  the  white  staff  in  Shrewsbury's  hands. 
Bolingbroke  saw  that  his  game  was  out.  Saturday  the  city 
was  put  under  arms;  word  was  sent  to  the  Elector  of  Hano- 
ver; the  Pretender's  cause  was  lost.  Sunday  morning  at  a 
little  before  noon  the  heralds  proclaimed:  "God  save  his 
Gracious  Majesty,  King  George  I."     The  time  of  Queen 


LITERATURE  OF  AGE  OF  QUEEN  ANNE    179 

Anne  was  over.  The  Earl  of  Oxford  was  removed  on 
Tuesday;  the  Queen  died  on  Sunday.  "What  a  world  is  this 
and  how  does  fortune  banter  us  1"  wrote  Bolingbroke  to 
Swift  next  day. 

With  the  death  of  Anne  my  story  really  ends.  With  that 
event  indeed  begins  a  new  chapter  in  English  history.  It 
wasn't  merely  the  accession  of  a  new  line;  it  was  the  final 
triumph  of  one  party  and  the  final  defeat  of  the  other.  "I 
see  plainly  the  Tory  party  is  gone,"  said  Bolingbroke  two 
days  after  the  death  of  Anne.  Its  most  characteristic  doc- 
trines :  the  divine  right  of  kings,  the  duty  of  implicit  obedi- 
ence, the  virtual  independence  of  the  King  over  the  Parlia- 
ment, the  supremacy  of  Church  over  State, — all  had  been 
triumphantly  refuted  by  the  hard  logic  of  events.  Not  that 
no  one  held  those  opinions  any  more ;  on  the  contrary  Boling- 
broke was  probably  right  in  saying  that  three-fourths  of 
the  people  out  of  town  held  them  vaguely  still;  but  they 
were  hopelessly  inoperative.  For  the  logic  of  Tory  senti- 
ment led  to  Jacobites,  and  Jacobites  meant  a  Roman  Catho- 
lic monarchy. 

The  result  was  that  after  the  accession  of  the  House  of 
Hanover,  a  small  portion  of  the  Tory  party  became  active 
Jacobites,  went  over  to  France  and  joined  the  Pretender  as 
Bolingbroke  did,  or  stayed  at  home  and  plotted  for  him;  but 
the  great  majority  of  them  gave  up  the  struggle  and  retired 
from  politics  altogether.  When  the  party  emerged  with 
some  prominence  a  generation  later,  it  was  a  new  party  with 
the  old  name.  The  Whigs  had  it  all  their  own  way,  and 
after  some  quarrels  among  them  the  control  of  the  govern- 
ment in  17 17  fell  almost  entirely  into  the  hands  of  that 
shrewd  man,  Robert  Walpole.  King  George  I  was  a  great 
awkward,  sleepy,  hulky  though  not  unkindly  nor  altogether 
witless,  German,  who  couldn't  speak  a  half  dozen  words  of 
English.  For  the  first  time  he  made  it  evident  that  the  Eng- 
lish could  get  on  quite  as  well  with  a  wooden  King.  Quite 
content  to  rule,  he  left  the  government  to  his  minister,  Wal- 
pole. So  long  as  Walpole  let  him  comfortably  alone,  fur- 
nished him  money  enough  to  satisfy  his  vulgar  avarice  and 


180  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

kept  the  Duchess  of  Kendall's  pockets  full  too,  he  was  con- 
tent to  allow  his  minister  to  manage  affairs  as  he  would.  He 
couldn't  speak  any  English,  and  Walpole  couldn't  speak  a 
word  of  German,  and  their  very  limited  intercourse  was  car- 
ried on  in  atrocious  Latin.  When  George  I  died  and  George 
II  came  to  the  throne  in  1727,  it  was  merely  changing  a  big, 
good-natured  German  for  a  little,  waspish  German,  that 
was  all.  Walpole  governed  still.  His  long  ministry  is  im- 
portant in  the  development  of  English  commerce,  colonies, 
society;  but  it  had  little  political  history,  and  we  may  dis- 
miss it  altogether  for  it  had  almost  no  influence  on  litera- 
ture. Walpole  himself  was  a  big,  coarse,  fox-hunting  squire, 
who  had  no  taste  or  knowledge  of  letters,  and  not  a  cent 
of  money  to  waste  on  them.  Swift  and  Gay  and  Pope  dis- 
charged some  of  their  fiercest  satire  upon  him,  but  they 
might  as  well  have  tried  to  worry  a  rhinoceros  with  a  pop- 
gun. Some  contemptuous  or  indifferent  reply  was  all  the 
notice  they  could  provoke  from  "Bob,  the  poets'  foe."  Let- 
ters fell  at  once  into  neglect,  and  it  was  under  Walpole  that 
Johnson  slaved  and  Savage  starved.  Government  patronage 
of  men  of  letters  and  the  close  connection  of  politics  with 
literature  closed  when  Anne  died;  and  I  may  therefore  close 
my  survey  then. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JONATHAN  SWIFT 


THE  figure  of  Jonathan  Swift  has  for  the  student  of 
literary  biography  *  an  interest  such  as  attaches  to  no 
other  man  of  letters  of  the  Queen  Anne  time.     And 
this  not  merely  because  he  was  the  most  strenuous  and  orig- 
inal genius  of  that  age.    His  public  career  abounds  in  strik- 
ing  dramatic  situations,   and  provoked  bitter  controversy 
that  has  lasted  ever  since;  while  the  story  of  his  private  life 
is  tinged  with  some  of  the  colors  of  romance,  and  ends  at 
last  in   the   most  somber  tragedy.     To  Swift  himself  his 
career  seemed  a  series  of  defeats.    Towards  the  close  of  his 
life  he  wrote  to  Bolingbroke,2  "I  remember  when  I  was  a 
little  boy  I  felt  a  great  fish  at  the  end  of  my  line  which  I 
drew  up  almost  on  the  ground;  but  it  dropped  in,  and  the 
disappointment  vexes  me  to  this  very  day,  and  I  believe  it 
was  the  type  of  all  my  future  disappointments."      In  truth  it 
would  seem  an  ill  star  that  presided  over  this  man's  na- 
tivity. With  a  native  scorn  and  dread  of  dependence,  he  was 
born   into  the  narrowest  poverty.      With  abilities  greater 
than  those  of  any  man  of  letters  in  his  time,   and  social 
powers  that  made  him  admired  even  more   than  he   was 
dreaded,  he  was  nevertheless  doomed  to  receive  fewer  of 
the  rewards  of  life  than  fell  to  any  of  his  rivals,  and  to 
pass  the  greater  part  of  his  days  in  a  country  he  despised. 
With   affections  naturally  strong  and  tender  beyond  most 
men's,  he  was  destined  by  a  cruel  irony  of  fate  to  find  those 
affections  sought  where  they  could  never  be  bestowed,  and 
to  pass  his  days  without  the  solace  of  the  dearest  relation- 

'  This  essay  on  Swift,  originally  designed  for  the  introduction  to  a  pro- 
jected volume  of  selections  in  the  Athenaeum  Press  Series,  never  published, 
has  been  slightly  altered  and  rearranged  to  fit  the  present  volume.  [L,  B.  G.] 

"April    5,    1729.      Works    (Scott's    2d    ed.,    Edinburgh,    1824),    Vol.    XVII. 
p.  253. 

181 


182  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ship  of  life.  With  an  almost  extravagant  admiration  for 
sanity  and  homely  vigor  of  thought,  he  lived  all  his  life  in 
terror  of  the  inevitable  advance  of  mental  disease,  and 
finally  was  forced  to  pass  through  the  dismal  stages  of  in- 
sanity and  idiocy  before  the  kindly  dismissal  of  death. 

II 

Nor  did  Swift's  ill-fortune  end  with  his  life.  He  has 
been  very  unlucky  in  his  biographers,  though  their  number 
and  long  succession  attest  to  the  interest  the  story  of  his 
life  has  always  excited.  The  earlier  attempts  at  a  biography 
are  especially  inadequate  and  unjust.  The  Earl  of  Orrery, 
a  priggish  egotist,  who  made  the  acquaintance  of  Swift  as 
late  as  1732,  published  a  vain  and  spiteful  book,  Remarks 
upon  the  Life  and  Writings  of  Dr.  Jonathan  Swift,  only 
six  years  after  the  dean's  death.  Good,  but  rather  dull,  Dr. 
Delany  came  to  the  defense  of  Swift,  in  his  Observations 
upon  Lord  Orrery's  Remarks,  published  in  1754.  Delany 
had  known  Swift  intimately  since  about  171 5,  and  his  book 
is  a  valuable  storehouse  of  characteristic  anecdote  and  rem- 
iniscence; but  it  is  a  defense  rather  than  a  biography,  and 
does  not  pretend  to  give  a  detailed  account  of  Swift's  life 
or  an  impartial  estimate  of  his  work.  Dr.  Hawkesworth, 
dullest  and  most  pompous  of  essayists,  prefixed  to  a  new 
edition  of  Swift's  Works  a  Memoir  (1755)  which  contained 
no  new  facts  and  no  valuable  opinions.  The  same  year, 
one  Deane  Swift,-  son-in-law  of  Mrs.  Whiteway,  Swift's 
cousin  and  housekeeper,  answered  both  Orrery  and  Delany, 
in  an  uncommonly  silly  book,  which  is  chatter  from  cover 
to  cover.  To  complete  the  list  of  works  written  shortly 
after  the  dean's  death,  we  must  add  the  Memoirs  (1748) 
of  Mrs.  Pilkington,  a  vulgar  adventuress  with  a  kittenish 
vivacity  and  trickiness  of  manner,  whose  book  is  a  curious 
farrago  in  which  lie  and  truth  are  vexatiously  mixed. 

In  the  next  generation  Dr.  Johnson's  Life  (1781)  in 
the  Lives  of  the  Poets,  is  stiff,  unsympathetic,  and  adds  little 
to  our  information;  but  at  all  events  it  contains  no  nonsense 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  183 

and  still  may  be  called  one  of  the  best  of  the  shorter  sketches. 
Then  in  1785,  with  great  flourish  of  trumpets  as  the  final 
life,  appeared  the  Life  by  Thomas  Sheridan.  This  Sheridan 
was  the  son  of  an  old  friend  of  Swift,  and  the  father  of 
Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan:  he  seems  to  have  had  his  fath- 
er's blundering  arrogance  and  his  son's  shiftlessness  without 
the  brains  of  either  one.  His  Life  is  a  tedious,  inaccurate, 
garrulous  book.  If  to  this  list  we  add  a  short  Inquiry  into 
the  Life  of  Suift  (1789)  by  George  Monck  Berkeley, — 
grandson  of  Bishop  Berkeley, — we  shall  have  most  of  the 
books  upon  Swift  written  during  the  eighteenth  century.  All 
of  them,  with  the  exception  of  Johnson's,  were  written  by 
persons  of  mediocre  ability,  and  no  one  of  them  can  take 
rank  as  an  adequate  and  impartial  life. 

In  1 8 14  appeared  the  Life  by  Walter  Scott,  forming 
afterwards  the  first  volume  of  his  edition  of  Swift's  works. 
Scott's  clear  and  flowing  narrative  continued  to  be  until  quite 
recently  the  best  account  of  Swift's  career;  but,  while  he  had 
gathered  considerable  new  matter,  Scott  was  too  much  in 
haste  to  test  his  facts  or  to  digest  them,  and  his  work,  there- 
fore, is  occasionally  inaccurate,  and  on  most  of  the  disputed 
questions  of  Swift's  life,  it  shows  hesitation  or  uncertainty 
of  opinion.  A  few  years  later,  18 19,  a  valuable  life  of 
Swift  was  written  by  William  Monck  Mason  of  Dublin. 
Mason  effectually  consigned  his  work  to  oblivion  by  writing 
it  in  villainous  English,  choking  a  thin  strip  of  text  in  a 
thicket  of  notes,  and  then  thrusting  the  whole  into  the  mid- 
dle of  a  stodgy  quarto,  The  History  and  Antiquities  of  the 
Church  of  St.  Patrick.  But  he  was  a  laborious  and  accurate 
scholar,  and  his  portentous  body  of  notes  is  a  storehouse  of 
facts  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  student  of  the  life  of 
Swift.  Mason  was  an  enthusiastic  defender  of  Swift:  but 
the  general  verdict  was  still  the  other  way.  The  essayists — 
save  Hazlitt — and  the  historians  have  every  one  his  fling  at 
the  great  satirist.  Jeffrey  sums  him  up  with  ready  assurance 
as  "an  apostate  in  politics,  indifferent  in  religion,  a  defamer 
of  humanity,  the  slanderer  of  the  statesmen  who  served  him, 
the  destroyer  of  the  women  who  loved  him."    "Essentially 


1 84  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

irreligious  from  a  vulgar  temperament,"  says  De  Quincey 
with  his  usual  recklessness  of  phrase,  "an  abominable,  one- 
sided degradation  of  humanity."  "The  haughtiest,  the  most 
vindictive  of  mortals,"  says  Macaulay.  "He  had,"  says 
Lord  Stanhope,  tartly,  "a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  baser 
parts  of  human  nature — for  they  were  his  own."  Even  so 
kindly  a  cynic  as  Thackeray  belabors  the  dean  with  such 
epithets  as  "bully,"  "bravo,"  "outlaw,"  "Yahoo,"  and  be- 
lieves that  he  was  tormented  with  a  life-long  consciousness 
of  his  own  religious  insincerity. 

But,  in  the  long  run,  posterity  is  just.    A  change  in  the 
judgment  upon  Swift  is  marked  by  the  appearance  of  the 
first — and  only — volume  of  the  Life  by  John  Forster,   in 
1875.     Mr.  Forster's  style  is  sometimes  operose,  and  his 
vast  admiration  for  his  subject  leads  him  occasionally  into 
a  kind  of  Boswellian  diffuseness  and  detail;  but  his  patient 
industry  in  the  collecting  and  sifting  of  materials,  and  his 
evident  determination  not  to  be  misled  either  by  prejudice 
or  by  enthusiasm  in  his  search  for  the  exact  truth,  promised 
to  make  his  book  the  standard  life  of  Swift.   Unfortunately, 
he  died  shortly  after  the  issue  of  his  first  volume.    The  ma- 
terials he  had  gathered  were,  however,  put  at  the  disposal  of 
Sir  Henry  Craik  for  his  Life  of  Jonathan  Swift   (1882). 
Sir  Henry  Craik  has   reached  conclusions   different   from 
those  of  Mr.  Forster  on  a  few  matters, — especially  on  the 
vexed  question  of  the  marriage  to  Stella, — but  on  the  whole 
he  gives  the  same  favorable  estimate  of  Swift's  character 
that  Mr.  Forster  had  promised.    That  estimate  has  been  re- 
peated by  later  writers,  like  Mr.  Moriarty  and  Mr.  Churton 
Collins.    In  fact  it  has  now  become  the  general  one.     Few 
critics  to-day  would  repeat  the  reckless  charges  of  political 
treachery,  religious  hypocrisy,  general  misanthropy  so  freely 
made  against  the  great  dean  seventy-five  years  ago. 


Ill 

Jonathan  Swift  was  born  in  Dublin,  November  30,  1667. 
Both  his  parents  were  of  English  stock;  and  he  always  pro- 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  185 

tested  that  he  was  Irish  only  in  the  accident  of  his  birth.    He 
was   a    posthumous   child,   his   mother   having  been   left   a 
widow  some  eight  months  before  his  birth.    His  father  was 
the  seventh  or  eighth  of  ten  brothers,  only  the  eldest  of 
whom,  Godwin,  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  enough  energy 
to  command  marked  success.    This  Godwin  was  a  lawyer. 
He  had  come  over  to  Dublin  early  in  life  and  by  energy  in 
his  profession,  and  by  repeated  marriage  with  a  series  of 
heiresses,  he  had  accumulated  a  handsome   fortune.     His 
younger  brother,  Jonathan — father  of  the   future  dean — 
followed  Godwin  to  Dublin;  but  he  had  not  the  vigor  or 
shrewdness  to  repeat  the  elder  brother's  success.    He  picked 
up  such  scraps  of  legal  business  as  he  could  find,  obtained 
by  the  influence  of  his  brother  an  appointment  as  steward  of 
the  Inns  of  Court,  married  a  bright  but  penniless  young 
Englishwoman,  and  died  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  leaving 
her  only  an  annuity  of  twenty  pounds  a  year. 

It  was  to  Godwin  Swift  that  the  young  widow  naturally 
turned  for  aid  to  rear  her  son.     At  the  age  of  six  the  boy, 
Jonathan  Swift,  was  sent  to  Kilkenny  School  at  the  charges 
of  his  uncle  Godwin.    At  about  the  same  time,  his  mother 
left  Ireland  to  live  with  her  own  family  in  Leicestershire; 
and  mother  and  son  would  seem  to  have  seen  each  other  but 
little  for  the  next  fifteen  years.     After  nine  years  at  Kil- 
kenny, Swift  was  entered  ( 1682)  at  the  University  of  Dub- 
lin.    Swift's  university  life  was  always  a  sore  spot  in  his 
memory.    The  assistance  of  his  uncle,  though  probably  ade- 
quate to  his  needs,  was  not  very  generous,  and  apparently 
was  not  sweetened  by  a  gracious  manner  of  bestowment. 
"He  gave  me  the  education  of  a  dog,"  said  Swift,  rather 
too  bluntly,  years  afterward.    But  to  his  haughty  temper  any 
assistance  would  have  been  galling.    He  always  had  a  mor- 
bid dread  of  dependence  of  any  kind.    Nor  was  he  likely  to 
care  much  for  the  university.    A  young  man  of  keener  relish 
for  learning,   if  his  pride   had   been   wounded   by  poverty, 
might  have   withdrawn   himself   from   his  companions   and 
with  haughty  moroseness  buried  himself  in  his  books.    Sam- 
uel Johnson  did  that,  at  Oxford,  a  half  century  later.    But 


1 86  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Swift  never  had  the  scholar's  temper  in  any  high  degree. 
All  through  life,  he  was  satisfied  only  when  in  the  thick  of 
affairs.  He  prized  learning  only  as  a  means  to  practical 
ends;  and  the  dull  routine  of  the  university  curriculum 
seemed  to  him  quite  out  of  relation  with  life.  It  was  not 
mastery  of  books  he  wanted,  but  mastery  of  men;  and  at  the 
university  mastery  of  men  was  quite  impossible  to  an  awk- 
ward sizar.  It  is  probable,  indeed,  that  the  early  biographers 
were  over  ready  to  pronounce  Swift  a  dunce  in  the  university. 
Mr.  Forster  has  fished  up  from  oblivion  a  leaf  out  of  the 
college  roll,  containing  the  record  of  Swift's  examinations, 
which  shows  that  he  did  well  in  his  classics,  and  not  so  ill  as 
some  of  his  classmates  in  his  other  studies.  Dull,  we  may  be 
sure,  Jonathan  Swift  never  was ;  but  restless,  angry,  and  idle. 
He  himself  said,  later  in  life,  that  "he  was  so  much  discour- 
aged and  sunk  in  his  spirits  that  he  too  much  neglected  some 
parts  of  his  academic  studies,  for  some  parts  of  which  he 
had  no  great  relish  by  nature  .  .  .  :  so  that  when  the  time 
came  for  taking  his  degree  of  Bachelor,  although  he  had 
lived  with  great  regularity  and  due  observance  of  the  stat- 
utes, he  was  stopped  of  his  degree  for  dullness  and  insuffi- 
ciency; and  at  last  admitted,  in  a  manner  little  to  his  credit, 
which  is  called  in  that  college,  speciali  gratia."  x  The  truth 
seems  to  be  that  he  would  study  only  what  he  liked,  and 
that  he  found  very  little  which  he  liked.  In  the  Latin 
classics  and  in  history,  however,  he  read  carefully,  espe- 
cially during  the  later  years  of  his  stay  at  the  uni- 
versity. He  took  his  Bachelor's  degree  in  1686  and  had 
nearly  completed  three  years  of  further  residence  when  the 
university  was  broken  up  by  the  troubles  attending  the 
Revolution,  and  he  was  forced  to  leave  Dublin.  Not  know- 
ing where  to  turn,  he  went  to  Leicestershire,  to  stay  for  a 
time  with  his  mother. 

The  months  he  spent  in  Leicestershire  could  hardly  have 
been  happy  ones.  He  had  just  passed  his  twenty-first  birth- 
day. His  university  career  was  ended.  Angrily  throwing 
off  the  sense  of  dependence  under  which  he  had  lived  thus 

*  Autobiographical  Anecdotes,  Works,  Vol.  I,  pp.  509-10. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  187 

far,  he  eagerly  looked  out  for  some  chance  at  the  work,  and 
the  prizes  of  life.  But  every  door  seemed  shut.  With  a  wit 
such  as  no  other  young  man  in  England  was  master  of,  an 
admirable  genius  for  practical  affairs,  and  a  proud  con- 
sciousness of  his  parts,  he  could  see  no  way  of  setting  his 
powers  at  work.  In  these  circumstances  he  decided  to  act 
upon  a  hint  from  his  mother.  She  was  a  distant  relative  of 
the  wife  of  Sir  William  Temple,  and  it  was  at  her  suggestion 
that  Swift  applied  to  that  great  man  for  employment.  The 
application  was  favorably  received:  and  thus,  in  1689,  for 
lack  of  anything  better  to  do,  Jonathan  Swift  came  to  reside 
at  Moor  Park  in  the  family  of  Sir  William  Temple. 


IV 

Sir  William  Temple  was  a  very  famous  man.  He  had 
earned  in  his  earlier  years  a  reputation  as  a  diplomatist.  He 
had  negotiated  the  Triple  Alliance.  He  had  arranged  the 
royal  match  between  William  and  Mary.  He  was  a  great 
man,  but  he  knew  when  to  leave  off.  Always  studious  of  his 
own  safety,  he  would  attempt  no  task  of  doubtful  issue,  and 
accept  no  position  of  personal  risk.  He  took  no  chances. 
Accordingly,  when  danger  thickened  before  the  Revolution, 
having  done  one  or  two  great  things,  he  prudently  decided 
to  retire  on  the  strength  of  them.  He  had  a  natural  taste  for 
a  little  gardening  and  a  little  literature;  a  bit  of  romance  in 
his  youth  had  been  followed  by  a  most  quiet  and  happy  do- 
mestic life;  and  through  all  those  troublous  years  from  1680 
to  1688  no  impulse  either  of  duty  or  of  ambition  could  move 
him  from  his  library  and  his  orangery  to  the  agitations  of 
public  life.  When  William  came  to  the  throne  he  offered 
his  old  friend,  who  was  then  living  at  Sheen,  the  position 
of  Secretary  of  State;  but  Temple  declined  and  withdrew 
still  further  away  from  London  to  his  estate  of  Moor  Park 
in  Surrey.  On  this  secluded  estate,  with  its  dignified  manor- 
house,  its  canals  and  gardens  in  the  trim  Dutch  style,  and 
wide  heathery  commons  and  lonesome  woods  encircling  all, 


1 88  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Temple  passed  the  rest  of  his  life.  "The  measure  of  choos- 
ing well,"  says  Temple  at  the  close  of  one  of  his  most 
charming  dilettante  essays,1  "is  whether  a  man  likes  what  he 
has  chosen;  which,  I  thank  God,  has  befallen  me.  ...  I 
have  passed  five  years  without  ever  going  once  to  town."  A 
reserved,  decorous,  sometimes  just  a  little  pompous  old  man, 
who  had  a  king  come  down  to  see  him  now  and  then,  and 
never  lost  among  his  cherry  trees  the  grand  air  he  had 
learned  in  courts.  In  his  shadow  one  sees  the  pale  though 
pleasant  figure  of  Lady  Temple,  and  Temple's  widowed 
sister,  Lady  Giffard.     That  is  the  family. 

Such  was  the  scene  of  dignified  retirement  into  which 
was  now  ushered  young  Jonathan  Swift.    He  could  hardly 
have  found  it  congenial.     He  never  had  much  respect  for 
dignities  and  he  always  hated  retirement.     With  the  ex- 
ception of  two  periods  of  absence  in  Ireland  he  was  a  mem- 
ber of  this  household  until  Temple's  death  in  1699.   On  the 
whole  they  can  hardly  have  been  happy  years.   We  need  not 
believe  that,  as  Macaulay  says,  he  lived  in  the  servants'  hall 
and  sat  at  the  second  table;  later  biographers  have  shown 
that  to  be  only  one  of  Macaulay's  bits  of  picturesque.    He 
seems  to  have  been  at  first  Temple's  amanuensis  and  reader, 
later  his  private  secretary,  and  at  last  his  confidential  ad- 
viser and  intimate  friend.  But  at  best  it  was  a  relation  of  de- 
pendence under  which  the  eager  pride  of  the  young  man 
chafed  sorely.    The  heavy  decorum  of  Temple,  who  as  he 
grew  older  grew  more  and  more  like  Polonius,  must  often 
have  been  well-nigh  intolerable  to  a  young  fellow  who  was 
always  inclined  to  regard  the  stately  conventionalities  of 
life  as  no  better  than  solemn  shams.     "Faith,"   growled 
Swift,  years  afterward,  "I've  plucked  up  my  spirits  since 
then;  he  spoiled  a  fine  gentleman."    Traces  of  the  disease 
which  made  him  restless  and  irritable  all  his  life  can  already 
be  seen  in  these  early  years.     But  what  was  worst  of  all,  his 
position  with  Temple  gave  him  no  access  to  that  active  life 
in  which  he  longed  to  play  a  part.   Never  was  there  a  young 
man  more  ambitious,  a  temper  more  restless  and  hungry 

1  Of  Gardening. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  189 

for  power.  But  what  could  he  do,  shut  up  with  a  superan- 
nuated statesman  who  was  playing  at  Greek  and  gar- 
dening? 

Yet  there  were  compensations.  Temple's  excellent  li- 
brary was  always  at  his  command;  and  he  did  a  vast  amount 
of  that  various  and  unsystematic  but  eager  reading  which 
is  probably  the  best  reading  a  young  man  can  do.  And  he 
was  perhaps  as  much  indebted  to  Temple's  counsels  as  to 
Temple's  books.  Always  interested  in  affairs,  Swift  was 
watching  keenly  the  game  of  contemporary  politics;  and 
Temple,  who  had  known  every  player  and  every  move  in 
that  game  for  more  than  twenty  years,  found  a  complacent 
pleasure  in  acting  as  his  mentor.  In  the  later  years  of  their 
intimacy  Swift,  as  he  says  himself,  was  "trusted  with  affairs 
of  great  importance,"  chief  of  which  was  a  private  message 
of  advice  to  King  William  on  the  matter  of  his  veto  of  the 
Triennial  Bill.  It  was  to  Temple's  extended  political  con- 
nections also  that  Swift  owed  his  introduction  to  a  few  of 
the  prominent  men  of  the  day.  King  William  himself  was 
an  occasional  visitor  at  Moor  Park,  and  promised  the  young 
Irish  secretary  whom  he  met  there  some  employment;  but 
he  never  did  anything  more  for  Swift  than  to  teach  him  to 
cut  asparagus  in  the  Dutch  fashion.  On  the  whole,  these 
years  with  Temple  were  no  ill  schooling  for  the  part  Swift 
was  later  to  play  in  the  political  history  of  his  time.  More- 
over, he  was  learning  the  use  of  his  weapons;  he  was  teach- 
ing himself  to  write.  He  tried  verses  first, — Pindaric  odes 
after  the  stilted  fashion  of  Cowley.  They  were  very  poor 
verses, — hard  prose,  inflated,  deranged,  mangled  almost  be- 
yond the  possibility  of  recognition.  He  sent  some  of  this 
stuff  to  Dryden ;  everybody  was  sending  to  Dryden  then,  and 
one  shudders  to  think  how  much  balderdash  the  great  critic 
must  have  gone  through.  But  Dryden's  familiar  verdict  in 
this  case  must  have  been  easy  and  quite  safe,  "Cousin  Swift, 
you  will  never  be  a  poet."  The  prediction  was  verified. 
Swift  lacked  utterly  the  first  great  requisite  of  the  poetic 
character,  the  sense  of  beauty.  Indeed,  he  seemed  to  have 
something  like  the  opposite  of  that,  a  quick  sense  of  ugliness 


190  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  deformity;  and  though  he  wrote,  first  and  last,  a  good 
many  verses,  he  never  wrote  any  poetry.  He  was  wise 
enough  not  to  try  it  again;  but  he  constantly  exercised  him- 
self in  that  art  of  prose  composition  of  which  he  became  so 
great  a  master.  As  he  afterwards  said,  he  "writ  and  burnt, 
and  writ  and  burnt  again,  upon  all  manner  of  subjects,  more 
than  perhaps  any  man  in  England."  Before  the  close  of  the 
century  he  certainly  could  write  a  stronger  prose  than  any 
man  in  England. 

Swift  finally  decided  to  go  into  the  Church.  It  is  possible 
that  in  other  circumstances  he  might  have  chosen  differently. 
He  was  ambitious  of  power,  and  could  he  have  had  the  aid 
of  wealth  and  social  connections,  might  have  preferred  some 
more  direct  avenue  to  public  life.  But  let  it  not  be  thought 
that  he  was  driven  into  the  Church,  as  a  last  resort,  by  pov- 
erty or  indolence.  He  was  not  the  man  to  cry,  "Put  me  in 
the  priest's  office  that  I  may  have  a  piece  of  bread."  On  the 
contrary  he  had  a  morbid  fear  of  such  a  charge;  and  it  was 
only  after  the  possibility  of  that  reproval  had  been  removed 
by  the  offer  of  a  sinecure  civil  position  from  Temple,  that 
he  consented  to  take  orders.  His  education,  his  connections 
fitted  him  for  the  Church.  His  moral  convictions  were 
strong,  and  his  sense  of  duty  decided.  He  did  his  duty  in 
the  Church,  as  he  conceived  that  duty,  faithfully  all  his  life 
long.  From  the  day  he  took  orders  till  his  death  his  con- 
stant thought,  his  most  strenuous  endeavors,  were  given  to 
the  service  of  the  Church  of  England.  In  those  days  of  the 
Sacheverells  and  the  Burnets,  when  one  great  political  party 
always  called  itself  by  preference  the  Church  party,  the 
office  and  work  of  the  ministry  was  more  largely  political 
than  we  now  conceive  them;  and  Swift  may  be  excused  if  his 
attention  was  mostly  given  to  the  public  and  political  side 
of  his  work,  and  if  he  looked  eagerly  for  advancement  in 
the  calling  he  had  chosen.  Yet  it  should  be  remembered 
that,  throughout  his  career,  whether  in  his  little  Irish  living 
where,  as  the  story  goes,  he  read  the  service  to  his  solitary 
clerk  beginning,  "Dearly  beloved  Roger,  the  Scripture 
moveth  you  and  me  in  sundry  places,"  or  in  the  great  cathe- 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  191 

dral  of  St.  Patrick's,  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  ever  omitted 
the  conscientious  performance  of  the  distinctively  clerical 
duties  of  his  office.  Doubtless  he  was  not  in  all  respects  well 
fitted  for  that  office.  He  was  never  at  his  best  in  the  pulpit. 
He  lacked  that  charity  that  suffereth  long  and  is  kind,  that 
hopeth  and  endureth.  And  he  knew  it;  and  doubtless  often 
had  doubts  as  to  the  wisdom  of  his  choice.  But  we  need  not 
believe,  as  Thackeray  rather  meanly  suggests,  that  he  was 
tormented  by  the  consciousness  of  a  life-long  hypocrisy.  He 
was  not  driven  by  poverty  or  servility  to  enter  a  profession 
he  did  not  respect,  or  to  teach  a  faith  he  did  not  believe.  It 
was  in  1694  when  he  made  his  choice.  He  parted — not  very 
amicably — with  Temple  and  went  over  to  Ireland  to  be  or- 
dained, thus  closing  his  second  period  of  residence  at  Moor 
Park.1 

His  absence  lasted  only  about  two  years.  He  was  given 
the  living  of  Kilroot,  a  beggarly  little  parish  in  a  poverty- 
stricken  district  where  there  were  hardly  more  than  a  dozen 
families  and  those  mostly  Presbyterians,  with  a  tumble-down 
hut  for  a  church,  and  a  living  of  scant  one  hundred  pounds  a 
year.  As  far  as  any  possibilities  of  active  life  were  con- 
cerned, he  might  as  well  have  been  with  Robinson  Crusoe  on 
his  island.  It  was  but  natural  that  when  Temple  urged  him 
to  come  back,  he  turned  over  his  parish  to  a  vicar,  and 
came.  He  remained  at  Moor  Park  this  time  until  Temple's 
death. 

These  last  years  of  his  stay  at  Moor  Park  were  more 
pleasant  than  the  first.  He  was  received  by  Temple  now  as 
an  equal  and  not  as  a  dependent.  Having  decided  his  pro- 
fession, he  was  no  longer  harassed  by  uncertainties  as  to  his 
career.  Once  a  priest,  always  a  priest.  Moreover,  he  now 
began  to  exercise  with  some  confidence  his  marvelous  pow- 
ers as  a  writer.  His  first  satire,  The  Battle  of  the  Books, 
though  not  published  until  1704,  was  written  during  these 
years.      An  idle  controversy  had  arisen  among  French  writ- 

'  In  1690  he  had  gone  over  to  Ireland  in  the  vain  endeavor  to  find  em- 
ployment there,  and,  returning  to  Leicestershire,  had  spent  some  months  with 
hi»  mother  before  he  could  bring  himself,  at  the  close  of  1691,  to  go  back  to 
Temple. 


192  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ers  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV  as  to  the  comparative  value  of 
ancient  and  modern  literature.  In  an  evil  hour  Temple  in- 
troduced the  discussion  to  English  readers  in  an  essay  on 
Ancient  and  Modern  Learning  in  which  he  took  the  position 
Chaucer  indicates  in  his  quatrain, — 

out  of  olde  feldes,  as  men  seith, 
Cometh  all  this  newe  corn  fro  yeer  to  yere; 
And  out  of  olde  bokes,  in  good  faith, 
Cometh  all  this  newe  science  that  men  lere. 

Modern  writers  draw  all  their  best,  he  said,  from  the  an- 
cient; modern  learning  was  mostly  got  out  of  libraries,  not 
out  of  life.  But  his  essay  has  little  to  recommend  it  to  us 
except  the  charm  of  its  genteel  loftiness  of  style.  Temple 
wrote  like  a  gentleman,  but  unfortunately  he  wrote  very 
unlike  a  scholar.  With  the  calm  assurance  too  often  accom- 
panying that  little  knowledge  which  is  a  dangerous  thing, 
he  asserts  that  modern  learning  and  letters  are  inferior 
in  interest  and  value  to  ancient,  and  undertakes  to  show  that 
the  older  a  book  is,  the  better  it  is.  This  latter  thesis  he  in- 
cautiously exemplifies  by  citing  the  spurious  Epistles  of 
Phalaris  as  at  once  the  oldest  and  the  best  specimen  of  this 
kind  of  writing.  Temple  was  answered  courteously  enough 
by  William  Wotton,  a  young  Cambridge  scholar;  but  his 
unlucky  slip  with  reference  to  the  Epistles  of  Phalaris  ex- 
posed him  to  a  more  formidable  antagonist.  Richard  Bent- 
ley,  who  was  already  the  best  classicist  in  England,  in  an 
examination  of  a  new  edition  of  the  Epistles  just  issued  by 
Temple's  friend,  Charles  Boyle,  took  occasion  to  heap  merci- 
less ridicule  upon  the  scholarship  of  a  gentleman  who  could 
mistake  the  forgery  of  a  Greek  rhetorician  in  the  first  cen- 
tury for  one  of  the  oldest  books  in  the  world.  It  was  at  this 
juncture,  when  Boyle  and  Atterbury  and  Smalridge  were 
rallying  for  a  reply  to  Bentley,  and  a  very  pretty  quarrel 
was  on,  that  Swift  came  to  the  defense  of  his  patron.  He 
was  quick  to  see  his  first  opportunity  for  a  telling  personal 
satire.  Bentley's  arrogant  swash-buckler  figure,  in  particu- 
lar, made  an  excellent  butt  for  the  young  fellow  to  tilt  at. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  193 

He  set  the  ancients  and  moderns  fighting  each  other,  and 
told  the  story  of  their  conflict  in  high  Homeric  fashion.  Of 
course  the  moderns  have  the  worst  of  it,  and  their  leaders, 
Wotton  and  Bentley,  come  to  grief  most  ignominiously.  To 
readers  of  to-day  The  Battle  of  the  Books  is  probably  not 
one  of  the  most  interesting  of  Swift's  works:  but  it  is  one 
of  the  most  characteristic.  Swift  knew  little  about  the 
critical  question  in  dispute  between  the  scholars,  and  cared 
less :  the  whole  controversy  seemed  to  him  an  excellent  ex- 
ample of  the  humbug  and  self-satisfied  pother  of  a  bookish 
scholarship,  of  all  the  solemn  fuss  that  is  made  over  the  rub- 
bish of  critical  learning  that  hasn't  any  relation  to  life.  The 
satire  is  the  first  of  his  many  attacks  upon  the  consecrated 
dulness  of  pedantry.  It  is  written,  moreover,  in  the  viva- 
cious and  defiant  manner  of  his  early  years,  crowded  with 
humorous  images,  and  contains  some  passages — like  the 
famous  apologue  of  the  spider  and  the  bee — which  set  uni- 
versal truth  in  homely  allegory  as  no  one  but  Swift  knew 
how  to  do.  To  Swift  himself  The  Battle  of  the  Books  must 
have  been  a  proof  of  his  own  powers.  He  wrote  no  more 
Pindarics.  He  was  already  at  work  on  his  next  and  greatest 
satire,  The  Tale  of  a  Tub. 

When  Temple  died  in  January,  1699,  Swift  was  left  to 
push  his  fortunes  as  best  he  could.  He  went  over  to  Ireland 
as  chaplain  of  Lord  Berkeley,  one  of  the  Irish  Lords- 
Justice,  who  promised  him  preferment.  But  when,  a  few 
weeks  later,  the  deanery  of  Derry  fell  vacant,  the  secretary 
of  Berkeley  coolly  informed  Swift  the  place  would  be  given 
to  another  unless  he  would  bid  a  thousand  pounds  for  it. 
"God  confound  you  both  for  a  couple  of  scoundrels,"  said 
Swift;  and  waited  for  something  that  could  be  had  without 
the  price  of  simony.  In  February,  1700,  he  accepted  the 
living  of  Laracor,  with  two  small  adjacent  parishes,  worth  in 
all  about  two  hundred  pounds  a  year.  He  continued  to  reside 
for  some  months  longer  as  chaplain  with  Berkeley,  but  in 
1 70 1  assumed  charge  of  his  parish  at  Laracor.  Although 
much  absent  from  it,  he  called  this  place  his  home  for  the 
next  twelve  years. 


194  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


Swift  was  followed  to  Laracor  by  one  person  whose 
friendship  had  already  begun  to  call  out  whatever  was  ten- 
der in  his  rugged  nature,  and  whose  story  was  ever  after- 
wards to  be  told  in  connection  with  his.    The  friendship  of 
Swift  and  Stella  is  probably  the  most  famous  in  English  lit- 
erary history;  but  much  needless  mystery  has  certainly  been 
thrown  about  it.  Twelve  years  before,  when  Swift  first  came 
to  Moor  Park  he  found  there,  in  attendance  upon  Lady 
Giffard  as  a  kind  of  companion,  a  Mrs.  Johnson,  whose 
husband,  Temple's  steward,  had  been  dead  several  years, 
and  who  had  with  her  two  daughters.  The  younger  of  these 
daughters,  Esther,  when  Swift  first  met  her,  was,  he  says, 
a  girl  of  six  years;  it  seems  she  was  seven,  just  learning  to 
read  and  not  talking  quite  plainly  yet.    We  have  no  details 
of  the  early  friendship,  but  we  may  safely  conjecture  that 
the  eager  Master  of  Arts  of  twenty-one  looked  not  unkindly 
upon  this  little  maid,  who  was  the  only  person  having  any 
spirit  of  youth  in  all  that  solemn  and  rather  priggish  house- 
hold.   We  know  that  he  taught  her  to  read,  helped  her  in 
her  copy  books,  and  learned  some  of  her  childish  speech  so 
well  that  he  never  forgot  it  to  his  dying  day.     Any  other 
relation  than  that  of  something  like  big  brother  and  little 
sister  would  have  seemed  absurd  to  either  of  them  then. 
But  when  Temple  died  both  of  them  were  ten  years  older. 
The  fourteen  years  that  separate  seven  and  twenty-one  are 
a  wider  interval  than  the  fourteen  years  that  separate  seven- 
teen and  thirty-one.      Stella   was   now   a  young  lady,   and 
Swift  was  still  a  young  man.    Yet  it  seems  clear  that,  what- 
ever it  may  have  been  to  her,  to  Swift  their  relation  was  the 
same  it  had  been  at  first.   To  him,  at  least,  that  relationship 
never  seemed  changed.   This  girl  had  grown  to  womanhood 
under  his  instruction;  he  had  watched  her  reading,  he  had 
come  to  be  her  adviser  and  nearest  friend;  but  there  is  not 
a  scrap  of  evidence  that  his  regard  for  her  was  other  than 
the  wise  and  tender  solicitude  of  a  guardian  or  an  elder 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  195 

brother.1  After  the  household  of  Temple  was  broken  up, 
Stella  went  over  to  Ireland;  partly  because,  after  the  second 
marriage  of  her  mother  she  no  longer  had  any  home  in  Eng- 
land, while  she  had  some  little  property  in  Ireland;  but  prin- 
cipally, as  was  no  secret,  that  she  might  be  near  her  friend 
Swift.  She  was  accompanied  by  an  elderly  relative,  Mrs. 
Dingley,  a  kind  of  mute  in  the  story  of  whom  no  recorded 
word  remains  to  show  what  sort  of  a  living  being  she  was; 
but  whose  company  made  it  possible  for  Stella  to  live  in  Ire- 
land without  the  annoyance  of  gossip.  When  Swift  was  ab- 
sent from  Laracor,  the  two  ladies  usually  occupied  the  vicar- 
age; on  his  return  they  retired  to  lodgings  in  the  vicinity  or 
in  the  little  town  of  Trim,  hard  by.  They  were  the  Doctor's 
friends  and  housekeepers.  He  was  very  friendly  to  them, 
and  kind  enough  to  look  after  their  little  money  matters. 
That  was  all;  and  no  one  seems  to  have  thought  of  making 
any  comment,  save  perhaps  that  Dr.  Swift  was  unusually 
scrupulous  in  his  care  to  avoid  giving  any  occasion  for  scan- 
dal. Now  these  are  all  the  facts  in  the  case  up  to  17 10.  Is 
there  anything  strange  in  them?  Is  there  anything  unac- 
countable in  that  this  young  lady  should  receive  and  appre- 
ciate the  friendship  of  a  man  she  had  known  from  her  ear- 
liest recollections,  that  she  should  value  his  careful  and 
solicitous  advice,  and  grow  increasingly  proud  of  his  friend- 
ship as  all  England  began  to  know  and  almost  to  fear  him; 
and  yet  that  she  should  never  expect  to  marry  him?     It  is 

1  There  is  good  evidence  to  the  contrary.  During  his  brief  stay  at 
Kilroot,  Swift,  for  lack  of  better  employment,  fell  in  love  with  a  Miss 
Waring,  sister  of  a  college  classmate.  The  lady  declined  his  offer  of 
marriage;  but  years  after,  when  Swift's  prospects  were  brightening,  she 
seems  to  have  repented  her  decision,  and  sought  to  induce  Swift  to  renew 
his  advances.  Swift  ended  the  acquaintance  by  a  very  sardonic  letter  in 
which  he  assures  her  that  he  cannot  understand  why  she  has  changed  her 
mind  but  that  he  will  stand  by  his  offer  if  she  insists.  In  this  letter  he  says, 
on  the  word  of  a  Christian  and  a  gentleman,  that  he  has  "never  thought 
of  being  married  to  any  but  yourself." 

When  later,  in  1704,  a  Dublin  clergyman,  one  Tisdall,  was  minded  to 
pay  court  to  Stella  he  wrote  to  Swift  His  letter  is  lost;  but  from  the  tone 
of  Swift's  answer  it  is  evident  that  he  regarded  Swift  rather  as  Stella's 
guardian  than  her  lover.  Swift  in  his  reply  says,  "If  my  fortunes  and 
humor  served  me  to  think  of  that  state  [i.e.,  of  marriage]  I  should  certainly 
.  .  .  make  your  choice."  The  whole  letter  is  such  as  it  is  inconceivable  that 
one  rival  should  write  to  another. 


196  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

possible  to  make  a  sentimental  romance  out  of  the  friend- 
ship of  Jonathan  Swift  for  Esther  Johnson,  but  there  is 
nothing  in  the  facts  of  the  case  to  warrant  it;  and  to  do  so  is 
to  miss  altogether  the  real  beauty  and  tenderness  of  that 
friendship. 


VI 

The  next  ten  years  brought  no  further  ecclesiastical 
preferment  for  Swift.  A  series  of  disappointments  left  him 
in  1710,  as  he  was  in  1701,  Vicar  of  Laracor,  with  a  con- 
gregation of  rarely  more  than  a  dozen, — "most  gentle  and 
all  simple,"  as  he  said, — and  an  income  all  told  of  about 
£250,  upon  which  there  were  charges  that  ate  up  the  greater 
part.  To  tell  what  he  hoped  to  get,  and  had  a  right  to  hope 
to  get,  but  lost, — that  would  be  too  long  a  story.  The  secre- 
taryship to  the  embassy  at  Vienna,  prebends  at  Windsor, 
Westminster,  Canterbury,  the  deanery  of  Derry,  the  bishop- 
ric of  Waterford, — they  had  all  been  dangled  before  his 
eyes  and  given  to  men  who  would  bid  higher  for  them  in 
money  or  in  service.  His  circle  of  acquaintance  was  widen- 
ing. He  was  much  in  London,  and  by  1705  had  met  Addi- 
son, Steele,  Philips,  Congreve,  Somers,  Halifax,  and  almost 
all  the  great  men  of  wit  or  politics.  The  Whig  party  seemed 
to  have  plenty  of  places  and  patronage  for  others,  but  noth- 
ing for  him. 

Meantime,  his  fame  was  growing.  In  1704,  The  Battle 
of  the  Books,  which  had  been  handed  about  in  manuscript 
for  six  years  or  more,  was  published,  and  in  the  same  volume 
was  included  The  Tale  of  a  Tub.  The  Tale  of  a  Tub  is  the 
most  masterly  prose  satire  in  the  English  language.  Its 
central  story,  in  the  magnitude  of  interests  involved  and  in 
the  homely  economy  of  satiric  material  used,  has  no  parallel ; 
while  in  the  introductions  and  digressions  the  eager  satire, 
breaking  away  from  the  bounds  of  ordered  narrative, 
sweeps  into  its  hurrying  stream  almost  all  the  complacent 
shams  of  truth,  the  little  omnium  of  self-satisfied  critics,  the 
shallowness  of  a  skeptical  philosophy,  the  parade  of  a  worth- 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  197 

less  science.  The  satire  is  bitter,  indignant,  but  entirely 
honest.  One  feels  in  those  early  satires  the  first  bright  in- 
vention of  early  life,  the  assurance,  the  audacity  of  youth. 
One  can  feel,  moreover,  as  he  reads,  the  eager  impatience  of 
this  proud  youth,  his  triumphant  scorn  of  folly  and  pretense, 
all  the  more  bitter  because  it  can  find  no  other  outlet.  Chaf- 
ing within  the  barriers  that  shut  him  out  from  the  great 
struggle  of  life,  this  haughty  young  champion  throws  his 
glove  defiantly  over  his  prison  wall  full  in  the  face  of  the 
heedless  world.  Dr.  Johnson — who  got  queer  wrinkles  in 
his  brain  sometimes — doubted  whether  it  could  have  been 
written  by  Swift;  "there  is  in  it,"  says  he,  "such  a  vigor  of 
mind,  such  a  swarm  of  thoughts,  so  much  of  nature  and  art 
and  life."  Precisely:  and  if  these  things  are  not  to  be  found 
in  the  prose  of  Jonathan  Swift,  where  in  this  world  are  they 
to  be  found?  Like  nearly  all  his  works,  The  Tale  of  a  Tub 
was  published  anonymously;  but  Swift  was  soon  known  to 
be  the  author.  After  that  there  could  be  no  question  as  to 
his  power. 

And  it  seems  certain  that  this  satire — though  not  pub- 
lished till  later — was  written  before  Swift  was  thirty  years 
of  age.  I  don't  wonder  at  his  pathetic  exclamation,  when  in 
later  years  as  his  mind  was  breaking,  he  turned  over  the 
leaves  of  this  book,  "Good  God!  what  a  genius  I  had  when 
I  wrote  that  book !" 

As  to  the  character  of  the  man  who  would  write  such  a 
book,  there  was  then,  and  has  been  ever  since,  some  differ- 
ence of  opinion.  Many  people  thought  the  book  irreverent; 
and  many  more  affected  to  think  so.  It  is  often  said  that 
had  Swift  never  written  it,  he  would  have  won  the  bishop's 
lawn  before  he  died.  It  may  be  admitted  that  the  Juvenalian 
temper  is  not  that  best  becoming  the  sacred  office;  but  it 
must  be  urged  that  Swift  believed  himself  writing  in  the 
interest  of  the  truth  he  professed  and  the  Church  to  which 
he  belonged.  No  one  who  understands  his  character  will 
doubt  his  statement  that  he  conceived  The  Tale  of  a  Tub 
fitted  to  serve  the  cause  of  morality  and  religion. 

In  point  of  fact,   The  Tale  of  a  Tub  probably  had  tar 


i98  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

less  to  do  with  Swift's  failure  to  get  advancement  in  the 
Church  than  his  doubtful  politics.     He  had  thus  far  called 
himself  a  Whig.    His  first  political  pamphlet,  a  rather  aca- 
demic analogy  Of   the  Dissensions  in  Athens   and  Rome 
(1701),  was  a  protest  against  the  Tory  attacks  upon  the 
Whig  leaders,  Somers  and  Halifax.     His  early  education, 
the  influence  of  Temple,  the  literary  friendships  of  more  re- 
cent years,  all  allied  him  with  the  Whig  party.     His  own 
opinions  on  all  matters  pertaining  to  the  State  were  in  ac- 
cord with  those  of  the  Whigs.     He  heartily  accepted  the 
Revolution  settlement.    He  had  no  sympathy  with  the  high 
Tory  notions  of  royal  prerogative  and  unconditional  obedi- 
ence which  the  logic  of  events  had  so  completely  refuted. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  was  growing  more  and  more 
dissatisfied   with   the   attitude   of  the   Whigs   toward   the 
Church.      It   is   always   to  be   remembered   as   explaining 
Swift's  conduct,  that  the  interests  of  the  Church  as  he  con- 
ceived those  interests,  were  to  him,  since  the  day  he  took 
orders,  of  supreme  importance.   The  decay  of  religion  in  his 
day  was  matter  of  grave  concern  to  all  good  men.    And  to 
Swift  the  only  efficient  religion  was  religion  as  by  law  es- 
tablished :  the  only  remedy  for  the  growing  irreligion  of  the 
age  was  to  strengthen  the  Establishment.    But  he  saw  that 
the  Whigs  were  indifferent  or  hostile  to  the  Establishment; 
they  were  over-indulgent  to  Dissenters.     They  opposed  the 
Occasional  Conformity  Bill  which  would  exclude  Dissenters 
from  civil  affairs;  they  urged  the  abolition  of  the  Tests  in 
Ireland.    Some  of  the  prominent  leaders,  like  Lord  Whar- 
ton, were  men  of  notoriously  evil  life.     The  Tory  party,  on 
the  other  hand,  were  distinctively  the  Church  party.     They 
professed  unflinching  zeal  for  its  interests.    Their  rallying 
cry  was  "The  Church  is  in  danger."     In  these  circumstances 
it  is  not  strange  that  Swift  found  himself  steadily  receding 
from  the  Whigs.    His  position  is  clearly  stated  in  a  series 
of  pamphlets  issued  in  1708:  On  the  Sacramental  Test;  A 
Project  for  the  Advancement  of  Religion  and  the  Reforma- 
tion of  Manners;  Argument  against  Abolishing  Christianity; 
and  The  Sentiments  of  a  Church  of  England  Man.     In  the 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  i99 

Sentiments  of  a  Church  of  England  Man  he  expressly  avows 
that  in  matters  of  the  State  he  is  a  Whig,  but  in  matters  of 
the  Church  a  Tory.  That  is,  he  is  already  in  the  position  of 
an  Independent,  midway  between  the  two  parties.  He  was 
soon  to  take  the  next  step,  and  place  himself  squarely  on  the 
Tory  side. 


VII 

To  understand  the  next  chapter  in  Swift's  life  we  must 
recall  briefly  the  condition  of  parties  in  the  winter  of  1710- 
171 1.    During  all  of  Anne's  reign  the  fortune  of  parties  de- 
pended largely  upon  the  ups  and  downs  of  the  great  War 
of  the  Spanish  Succession  which  broke  out  in  1701,  just  be- 
fore Anne  came  to  the  throne.    So  far  as  England  was  con- 
cerned, it  was  a  Whig  war.    King  William  welcomed  it  as  a 
crowning  opportunity  to  check  the  ambition  of  his  life-long 
enemy,    Louis   XIV;    and   the   Whig   party    supported   the 
policy  of  their  king.      The  Tories,  on  the  other  hand,  from 
the  first  gave  to  the  war  only  a  reluctant  and  unwilling  sup- 
port.    They  said,  truly  enough,  that  England  should  have 
nothing  to  do  with  a  quarrel  over  the  Spanish  crown.    They 
were  in  a  majority  when  the  war  began,  and  would  have  kept 
England  out  of  the  struggle  had  not  Louis  himself  made  it 
inevitable  by  acknowledging  the  claims  of  the  Pretender — 
son  of  the  deposed  James  II — to  the  English  throne.      But 
a   successful   war   is   always  popular,   and   strengthens  that 
party  which    favors  it  most.      In  the  general   elections  of 
1705,  which   followed  the  great  victory  of  Blenheim,   the 
Whigs  returned  very  large  majorities;  by  1708  they  were 
able  to  demand  the  exclusion  of  all  Tory  members  from  the 
cabinet.     Ministry,  Lords,  and  Commons  were  now  under 
their  control;   it  was  the   beginning  of  strictly  party  gov- 
ernment. 

Yet  in  spite  of  this  success,  the  Whigs  were  nearing  de- 
feat. For  the  war  was  beginning  to  be  unpopular.  After 
eight  years  of  victories  it  seemed  no  nearer  ending  than 
when  it  began.     In  fact  there  was  a  growing  suspicion  that 


200  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

the  Whigs  did  not  wish  it  to  end.   For,  by  the  device  of  the 
national  debt,  the  burdens  of  the  war  seemed  to  fall  almost 
exclusively  on  the  landed  class,  to  which  most  of  the  Tories 
belonged,  while  its  rewards  came  almost  exclusively  to  the 
moneyed  class,   to  which   most   of  the  Whigs  belonged. 
As  soon  as  a  town  Whig  could  get  a  thousand  pounds 
he    invested   it   in    the    public   securities    upon   which,    of 
course,   he   paid   no   taxes,   but   from   which   he   received 
a  handsome  interest  out  of  the  taxes  paid  by  the  land. 
Moreover,   there   was   a  growing  doubt   about  the   ques- 
tion of  the  succession  which  had  been  the  original  justi- 
fication for  the  war.    Queen  Anne  had  evidently  not  long  to 
live,  and  her  children  were  all  dead  before  her.   In  the  event 
of  her  death  without  heirs,  it  had  been  provided  that  the 
crown  should  go  to  a  granddaughter  of  her  great-grand- 
father, the  Electress  Sophia,  ruler  of  a  petty  German  state, 
whom  nobody  knew  or  cared  for;  or,  if  she  should  die  be- 
fore Anne, — as  she  did, — then  the  crown  was  to  go  to  her 
son,  an  even  more  insignificant  person  than  his  mother.    It 
seemed  a  very  long  way  to  go  for  a  King  of  England,  and  a 
very  poor  place  to  find  one ;  and  many  people  who  were  by 
no  means  Jacobites  thought  that  the  Pretender  must  come 
to  the  throne  at  last,  and  began  to  doubt  the  wisdom  of 
fighting  so  long  to  keep  him  out.    It  was  also,  as  has  been 
said,  a  common  accusation  against  the  Whigs  that  they  were 
careless  of  religion  and  willing  to  secure  the  adherence  of 
the  Dissenters  and  all  the  non-religious  elements  in  the  State 
at  the  cost  of  any  sacrifice  of  the  interests  of  the  Church. 
This  feeling  was  greatly  intensified  by  an  unfortunate  mis- 
take of  the  Whigs.   A  very  declamatory  London  clergyman, 
Dr.  Sacheverell,  preached  a  sermon  before  the  Lord  Mayor, 
in  November,  1709,  on  what  he  chose  to  call  the  perils  to 
the  Church  from  false  brethren,  in  the  course  of  which  he 
took  occasion  to  arraign  Whig  doctrines  and  Whig  leaders 
in  very  intemperate  language.    His  declamation  would  have 
done  no  harm;  but  in  an  evil  hour  the  ministry  resolved  to 
impeach  him.    This  enabled  the  foolish  parson  to  pose  as  a 
martyr,  and  fanned  the  Tory  zeal  for  the  Church  into  a 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  201 

flame  at  once.  The  ladies  had  Sacheverell's  picture  in  their 
prayer  books  and  on  their  fans:  and  when  the  Doctor  went 
into  the  country  after  his  trial  his  journey  was  a  kind  of  tri- 
umph that  set  the  church  bells  ringing  half  over  England. 

All  this  augured  ill  for  the  Whigs.  But  their  defeat  was 
assured  when  the  Queen  changed  her  favorite.  Queen  Anne 
was  a  flaccid  creature,  who,  as  Swift  said,  "never  had  a 
stock  of  amity  sufficient  for  more  than  one  person  at  a 
time."  Through  her  reign  thus  far  she  had  been  under  the 
control  of  her  intimate  friend,  the  imperious  Duchess  of 
Marlborough.  But  it  finally  began  to  soak  into  Queen 
Anne's  mind  that  she  was  being  managed;  and  she  didn't 
like  it.  She  transferred  her  favor  from  the  Duchess  to  a 
waiting  woman  of  the  Duchess,  Abigail  Hill,  afterwards 
Mrs.  Masham,  who  was  a  distant  relative  of  the  Tory 
leader,  Robert  Harley.  And  thus,  through  Abigail  Hill, 
the  Tories  found  means  to  call  the  attention  of  the  Queen 
to  the  dissatisfied  condition  of  the  country,  and  to  persuade 
her  that  she  might  now  safely  dismiss  her  Whig  ministers, 
dissolve  parliament,  and  try  the  chances  of  a  general  elec- 
tion. Their  expectations  were  realized.  During  the  late 
summer  and  early  autumn  of  17 10  the  Queen  dismissed  her 
Whig  ministers,  one  after  another,  and  called  to  the  head  of 
affairs  Robert  Harley  and  young  Henry  St.  John, — soon  to 
be  made  Viscount  Bolingbroke.  Parliament  was  dissolved  at 
the  end  of  September  and  the  elections  which  immediately 
followed  brought  up  an  overwhelming  Tory  majority.  And 
to  crown  all,  next  year  Anne  created  twelve  new  Tory  peers 
at  a  stroke,  thus  swamping  the  Whig  majority  in  the  Lords. 
It  was  one  of  the  most  sweeping  and  dramatic  changes  in 
English  political  history. 

VIII 

Just  at  this  stirring  period  Swift  came  over  to  England. 
He  was  charged  with  a  commission  from  his  archbishop  to 
secure  if  possible  for  the  Irish  clergy  that  remission  of  the 
first  fruits  and  tenths  which  had  already  been  granted  to  the 


202  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

English  Church.  Once  before  he  had  been  in  London  on  the 
same  errand.  On  that  visit,  which  lasted  during  the  whole 
of  the  year  1708,  his  repeated  efforts  had  been  unsuccessful; 
and  his  failure  had  strengthened  his  conviction  that  no  fa- 
vors for  the  church  could  ever  be  obtained  from  the  Whigs. 
He  now  reached  London,  September  7,  17 10,  a  fortnight 
before  the  dissolution  of  Parliament.  Godolphin,  the  Whig 
Lord  Treasurer,  who  had  lost  his  place  a  month  before,  re- 
ceived him  very  coolly;  but  the  most  of  his  Whig  friends 
met  him  with  a  profusion  of  welcome  that  showed  plainly 
enough  their  fear  of  losing  him.  "Ravished  to  see  me,"  says 
he,  "and  would  lay  hold  on  me  as  a  twig  while  they  are 
drowning."  In  the  first  week  in  October  he  lays  his  Irish 
church  business  before  Harley,  and  is  received  with  a  con- 
sideration in  marked  contrast  with  the  coldness  of  Godol- 
phin. A  little  later  he  dines  with  Mr.  St.  John.  He  stands 
"ten  times  better  with  the  new  people,"  he  writes  to  Stella, 
than  ever  he  did  with  the  old;  "forty  times  more  caressed." 
With  his  old  literary  friends  in  the  Whig  camp,  Addison, 
Steele,  Philips,  Halifax,  he  is  still  intimate;  but  he  is  mak- 
ing new  ones  on  the  other  side.  Bishop  Atterbury,  genial 
Doctor  Arbuthnot,  Mr.  Pope,  the  new  poet, — they  are  all 
glad  to  have  the  honor  of  his  acquaintance.  By  the  middle 
of  November  he  has  made  up  his  mind.  He  will  give  his 
hearty  support  to  the  new  ministry. 

"He  ratted,"  says  Macaulay.  "Without  a  pretence  of 
principle,"  says  Lord  Stanhope,  "deserting  his  cause  for  no 
better  reason  than  that  he  thought  it  in  danger."  Not  at 
all.  On  the  contrary,  the  party  to  which  he  now  gave  his  al- 
legiance professed — and  Swift  believed  sincerely  professed — 
to  represent  those  principles  he  held  most  firmly.  It  was 
popular  anxiety  for  the  interests  of  the  Church,  more  than 
any  other  cause,  that  had  brought  them  into  power.  Nor, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  Swift  in  any  way  officially  committed 
to  the  Whigs.  His  association  had  chiefly  been  with  them 
hitherto,  but  he  had  already  protested  against  their  attitude 
toward  the  Church,  and  was  well  known  to  be  dissatisfied 
with  them.    In  fact,  while  some  of  Swift's  political  writing  is 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  203 

very  bitter,  he  was  never  an  extreme  partisan.  In  the  Senti- 
ments of  a  Church  of  England  Man  he  protests  against  that 
slavish  temper  which  enters  into  a  party  as  into  an  order  of 
friars,  and  throughout  his  writings  he  frequently  repeats 
this  protest.  Like  Harley,  he  would  have  preferred  a  gov- 
ernment made  up  from  the  liberal  men  of  both  parties  and 
representing  all  the  interests  of  the  nation.  But  he  soon  saw, 
as  Harley  did,  that  ministerial  action  could  be  efficient  only 
when  backed  by  a  compact  party  organization.  At  all 
events,  it  was  now  only  the  Tory  party  that  could  advance 
the  measures  he  had  most  at  heart;  there  was,  then,  no  rea- 
son  why  he    should    not   work   with   them. 

Doubtless  personal  motives  had  much  to  do  with  his 
action.  He  was  not  absolutely  disinterested.  Few  patriots 
are.  He  cared  little  for  titles  or  empty  rank.  These  things 
were  always  the  objects  of  his  satire;  and  his  life  did  not 
belie  his  satire.  Still  less  did  he  care  for  money.  No  man 
ever  had  a  cleaner  pair  of  hands  than  Jonathan  Swift.  When 
Harley  once  sent  him  a  small  sum  of  money  as  a  present  and 
not  at  all  as  a  bribe,  Swift  sent  it  back  indignantly,  and  re- 
fused to  enter  Harley's  doors  again  until  the  minister  had 
apologized.  But  he  did  covet  some  place  in  which  he  might 
show  what  stuff  there  was  in  him.  He  was  forty-three  years 
old.  Hitherto  he  had  been  banished  to  a  lonesome  corner  of 
Ireland.  Now,  conscious  of  great  ability,  he  was  ambitious 
of  some  opportunity  for  its  exercise, — assuredly  the  noblest 
kind  of  ambition.  It  was  power  he  wanted.  And  he  got  it. 
For  the  next  three  years  he  was  not  only  incomparably  the 
ablest  writer  on  the  Tory  side,  but  he  was  also  the  intimate 
friend  and  adviser  of  the  Tory  ministers. 

On  November  2,  17 10,  Swift  assumed  control  of  the 
Examiner,  a  weekly  journal  established  a  little  while  before 
to  explain  and  defend  Tory  principles.  Swift  made  the 
Examiner  the  organ  of  that  moderate  Tory  policy  which 
I  larley  approved.  His  object  was  to  write  down  the  Whigs, 
moderate  the  zeal  of  the  extreme  Tories,  and  to  unite  all 
liberal  men  in  support  of  the  Church  and  the  landed  inter- 
ests, and  in  opposition  to  the  war.    I  lis  papers,  therefore,  ex- 


2o4  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

cepting  a  few  that  attack  the  Whig  leaders, — especially 
Wharton  and  Marlborough, — are  conciliatory  and  persua- 
sive in  tone.  And  they  are  admirably  reasoned;  with  such 
simplicity  of  statement  and  such  apparent  candor  that  their 
very  sophistry  seems  convincing.  The  Examiner  is  our  first 
example  of  political  journalism  that  rises  to  the  level  of 
permanent  literature. 

In  the  autumn  of  171 1  Swift  attempted  an  even  more 
difficult  task.  The  Tory  ministry  had  taken  office  pledged 
to  end  the  war.  But  to  end  the  war  satisfactorily  seemed  al- 
most impossible.  Any  proposition  looking  toward  peace  pro- 
duced bitter  clamor  from  the  Whigs.  To  make  peace  now, 
they  said,  would  be  to  surrender  the  fruits  of  ten  glorious 
years  of  victory.  It  would  be  perfidy,  also,  to  England's 
allies.  Moreover,  they  urged,  the  failing  health  of  the 
Queen  made  the  danger  from  the  Pretender  more  imminent ; 
and  they  spread  the  rumor — for  which  there  was  doubtless 
some  foundation — that  the  ministry  were  willing  to  admit 
the  claim  of  the  Pretender  in  return  for  some  concessions 
from  France.  In  these  difficulties,  the  ministers  again  had 
recourse  to  Swift.  His  famous  pamphlet,  The  Conduct  of 
the  Allies,  fairly  convinced  thousands  of  Englishmen  that 
they  had  been  fighting  an  expensive  and  bloody  war  to  sat- 
isfy the  ambition  of  the  Emperor  and  to  fill  the  pockets  of 
the  Dutch,  and  that  they  were  now  asked  to  prolong  that 
war  still  further  merely  to  glut  the  greed  of  that  moneyed 
class  who  were  fattening  on  the  bankruptcy  of  the  nation. 
Seldom  has  a  political  pamphlet  had  such  immediate  effect. 
The  first  edition  was  exhausted  in  three  days,  the  second 
in  five  hours,  and  in  two  months  over  eleven  thousand  copies 
had  been  sold.  Swift's  array  of  fact  and  historical  precedent 
was  convincing  to  the  student  of  politics,  while  the  vigor  and 
simplicity  of  his  style  and  his  wealth  of  homely  illustration 
appealed  to  the  crowd.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  this 
pamphlet  stopped  the  war.  A  month  after  its  issue  the  min- 
isters dared  to  dismiss  Marlborough;  and,  though  the  nego- 
tiations dragged  on  through  another  year,  peace  was  now 
assured. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  205 

Language  to  Swift  was  simply  the  vehicle  of  thought. 
No  English  writing  better  combines  the  three  virtues  of 
clearness,  simplicity,  vigor.  "Proper  words  in  proper 
places,"1  is  his  curt  definition  of  style.  Admiration  for  style 
apart  from  the  meaning  beneath  it  he  would  have  considered 
a  mark  of  mere  literary  preciosity, — as  it  usually  is.  It  is 
true  indeed  that  the  greatest  masters  of  modern  prose  have 
at  command  felicities  of  arrangement  and  cadence  and  a  sub- 
tle use  of  the  suggestive  power  of  words,  by  means  of  which 
they  can  convey  their  thought  not  only  with  all  its  flexures 
of  meaning  but  with  all  its  delicate  nimbus  of  emotion.  But 
Swift  needed  no  such  niceties,  for  there  was  no  subtlety  or 
delicacy  in  his  nature.  Literary  elaboration  always  seemed 
to  him  to  imply  artifice  or  pedantry.  He  was  by  no  means 
one  of  the  mob  of  gentlemen  who  write  with  ease;  but  all 
his  efforts  were  directed  to  secure  absolute  clearness  of 
thought  before  he  wrote  at  all.  Feeble  and  ambiguous  writ- 
ing comes,  he  knew,  not  so  much  from  lack  of  skill  as  from 
faintness  and  indecision  in  thinking.  As  he  says  in  comment 
upon  his  definition  of  style,  "When  a  man's  thoughts  are 
clear,  the  properest  words  will  generally  offer  themselves 
first,  and  his  own  judgment  will  direct  him  in  what  order  to 
place  them."  His  own  word  seems  always  that  spontaneous 
one  that  leaps  first  to  the  lips;  but  it  is  always  the  "proper- 
est" word.  He  is  never  feeling  about  uncertainly  for  his 
phrase.  His  diction  is  homely  to  the  last  degree;  he  has  no 
hesitation  in  walking  over  the  rules  of  the  rhetorician,  and 
he  occasionally  slips  in  his  grammar;  but  you  are  never  at  a 
loss  for  his  precise  meaning.  And  there  is  a  surprising  vigor 
in  his  style.  Simplicity  with  some  writers  means  little  more 
than  meagerness;  their  style  is  simple  because  they  have  but 
little  to  say.  But  there  was  an  intense,  forthright  quality  in 
the  action  of  Swift's  mind  that  rolls  a  volume  of  plain 
thought  upon  you  with  amazing  ease  and  rapidity.  Imagina- 
tion, too,  is  never  long  absent  from  his  writing.  In  truth 
Swift's  imagination,  though  it  dwelt  mostly  among  familiar 
things,  was  richer  than  that  of  any  of  his  contemporaries. 

1  Lttter  to  a  Young  Clergyman,  Works,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  205. 


206  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

It  does  not  merely  furnish  the  material  for  his  allegories;  it 
sprinkles  his  page  thickly  with  homely  metaphor  and  ex- 
ample, and  it  is  constantly  giving  unexpected  poignancy  to 
some  familiar  phrase.  Yet  when  all  is  said,  the  highest 
praise  of  Swift's  style  is  its  absolute  fidelity  to  Swift's  per- 
sonality. Nobody  has  been  able  to  impress  himself  more  vig- 
orously upon  his  readers.  His  writing  is  all  alike.  He  has 
no  reserved  literary  manner.  Books,  pamphlets,  letters,  ser- 
mons, private  journals, — they  are  all  Jonathan  Swift  speak- 
ing right  on. 

Swift's  literary  fame  will  rest  upon  two  kinds  of  work 
in  which  he  has  never  been  surpassed,  the  political  tract — 
either  in  periodical  or  in  pamphlet  form — and  the  allegori- 
cal satire.  In  that  age  of  pamphlets,  when  the  press  prob- 
ably exerted  more  political  influence  than  ever  before  or 
since,  Swift's  work  is  perhaps  the  only  political  writing  that 
has  much  permanent  literary  value.  And  even  of  his  work 
— as  of  all  party  writing — it  may  be  said  that  the  qualities 
that  made  it  effective  at  the  time  tended  to  diminish  its  last- 
ing interest.  Aiming  at  immediate  results,  Swift  seldom  lifts 
his  subject  out  of  the  atmosphere  of  temporary  party  strife, 
as  Burke  did,  into  the  region  of  general  principles.  Indeed 
it  was  more  true  of  Swift's  political  work  than  of  Burke's 
that  (he) 

To  party  gave  up  what  was  meant  for  mankind. 

It  has  been  further  objected  to  some  of  Swift's  political 
writing  that  it  lacks  lightness  and  vivacity.  Mr.  Lane- 
Poole1  thinks  that  "no  modern  leader-writer,  however  com- 
mon-place, would  write  such  heavy  stuff"  as  the  Examiners 
now.  Well,  perhaps  not.  The  modern  editorial  is  written 
to  be  read  while  you  are  swallowing  the  morning  coffee  or 
balancing  yourself  on  one  leg  in  a  crowded  railway  car.  It 
must  not  mean  much,  as  it  must  reduce  the  task  of  thinking 
to  a  minimum.  Moreover,  it  is  written  as  a  pure  matter  of 
business,  by  men  who  may  vote  in  the  afternoon  for  the 

1Svnffs  Prose  Writings,  Preface,  p.  xxv. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  207 

candidate  they  have  abused  in  the  morning.  But  Swift  was 
more  earnest  than  that.  He  wrote  to  men  who  thought,  and 
he  was  determined  to  convince  them.  His  papers  continue 
to  interest  simply  because  he  put  so  much  of  himself  into 
them.  The  homely  sense,  the  inimitable  irony,  the  energy 
of  conviction,  the  triumphant  vigor  of  statement, — these 
hold  our  attention  though  we  have  ceased  to  care  for  the 
question  that  called  them  into  action.  Swift  was  the  prince 
of  controversialists.  He  could  be  extremely  rancorous  when 
rancor  would  tell  most;  but  he  knew  how  also  to  give  his 
most  dogmatic  statements  an  air  of  candor,  and  his  argu- 
ment, even  when  sophistical,  has  a  resistless  plausibility. 
The  soundness  of  his  reasoning  cannot  be  questioned.  He 
lacked  only  the  crowning  gift  of  persuasiveness.  He  really 
had  no  notion  of  moving  men  save  by  convincing  or  com- 
pelling them.  There  is  an  arrogant  tone  in  his  argument 
always,  and  he  makes  his  conclusions  so  clear  that  he  has 
nothing  but  contempt  for  those  who  dare  to  question  ihem. 
But  for  the  reader  of  to-day,  who  does  not  care  about  the 
conclusion  and  has  no  partisan  prejudices  to  be  offended, 
this  energetic  self-assurance  only  deepens  that  impression 
of  personality  which  is  always  the  secret  of  Swift's  power. 
But  it  was  not  by  his  pen  onlv  that  Swift  aided  the  min- 
istry. He  himself  took  more  satisfaction  in  his  personal  in- 
timacy with  them  and  the  value  they  placed  upon  his  counsel. 
His  pride  may  exaggerate  this  influence  somewhat;  but  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  for  two  years  no  man  outside  the 
ministry  had  so  much  to  do  with  the  most  important  meas- 
ures of  state.  For  once  his  pride  of  power  had  full  swing. 
He  was  not  the  man  to  bear  his  honors  meekly.  "I  am  proud 
enough  in  the  drawing-room  to  make  all  the  lords  come  up 
to  me,"  he  says  frankly  to  Stella  in  the  Journal;  "one  passes 
half  an  hour  pleasantly  enough."  lI  said  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham  must  make  the  first  advances  to  me,  not  I  to 
him.1  Doubtless  there  is  a  touch  of  cynical  swagger  in  the 
demeanor  of  this  Irish  priest,  and  he  asserts  his  supremacy 
with  a  little  too  much  bravado  Yet  there  must  have  been 
a  singular  fascination  in  the  personality  of  Swift.    We  think 


208  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  him  most  often  to-day  as  he  was  in  his  latest  years,  when 
disease  and  misanthropy  had  written  themselves  deeply  into 
his  face  and  out  of  his  eyes  looked  the  wild  gloomy  spirit  of 
his  approaching  doom.  But  in  those  days  when  he  was  at 
his  best,  his  face  was  singularly  attractive,  his  eyes 
Pope  described  as  "azure  as  the  heavens,"  and  his  mobile 
features  quivered  with  the  intensity  of  his  nature.  Certain  it 
is  that  many  of  the  best  men — and  many  of  the  best  and 
brightest  women — found  a  compelling  charm  in  his  compan- 
ionship. The  best  that  society  had  to  give  was  free  to  him. 
Years  before  Addison  had  characterized  him  as  the  most 
agreeable  companion  and  the  truest  friend  as  well  as  the 
greatest  genius  of  the  age ;  and  the  group  of  Tory  men  of  wit 
and  learning  that  now  drew  in  about  him, — Arbuthnot,  Gay, 
Prior,  Parnell,  Pope,  Oxford,  Bolingbroke,  Peterborough, 
Atterbury, — all  looked  up  to  him  as  the  center  of  their 
brilliant  circle.  His  keen  satiric  glance  pierced  through  all 
the  pretense  and  convention  of  society;  but  his  temper, 
though  occasionally  bitter,  was  not  yet  soured,  and  a  dash 
of  satire  gave  pungency  and  sparkle  to  his  conversation. 
For  he  was  an  admirable  talker.  He  knew  how  to  give 
some  intellectual  charm  to  the  conversation  of  any  company 
where  he  was;  while  his  sarcastic  essays  On  Polite  Conver- 
sation show  how  he  despised  the  feeble  flow  of  commonplace 
and  inanities  that  often  passed  for  conversation  in  what 
called  itself  good  society.  He  found  time  from  the  urgency 
of  business  to  extend  his  own  liberal  studies  and  to  aid  other 
people  in  theirs;  and  he  used  his  great  influence  with  the 
ministry  to  secure  a  generous  patronage  of  literature.  The 
only  pamphlet  he  ever  published  over  his  own  name — A 
Proposal  for  Ascertaining  the  English  Tongue — was  a 
letter  to  Harley  proposing  a  kind  of  academy  to  purify  our 
language  from  its  increasing  corruptions  and  to  fix  its  gram- 
mar and  vocabulary.  He  was  the  moving  spirit  in  that 
famous  Brothers'  Club  which  aimed  to  temper  politics  with 
letters,  and  in  which,  for  the  first  time  in  our  history,  men 
of  letters  met  on  a  perfect  equality  with  men  of  state.  And 
a  little  later,  it  was  Swift  who  founded  that  still   more 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  209 

famous  Scriblerus  Club  out  of  which  came,  in  time,    The 
History  of  John  Bull,  The  Dunciad,  and  Gulliver's  Travels. 
But  nothing  Swift  did  or  wrote  in  those  years  of  his 
stay  in  London  is  of  so  much  interest  to  posterity  as  that 
singular  document  which  was  not  meant  for  posterity  at  all, 
the  Journal  to  Stella.    When  he  landed  in  England,  Septem- 
ber  2,    1 7 10,   Swift  began  at  Chester  a  journal   letter  to 
Esther  Johnson;  he  continued  it  till  the  6th  of  June,  1713, 
when  he  was  at  Chester  again  on  his  way  back  to  Ireland. 
This  is  probably  the  most  remarkable  bit  of  autobiography 
in  the  language.     It  is  of  great  importance  as  a  record  of 
political   change   during  those   eventful   years,   as    a   vivid 
picture  of  social  conditions  in  London;  but  its  chief  interest 
consists  in  its  revelation  of  the  inmost  heart  of  the  writer. 
Swift's   daily  life   in  its   routine,   his  plans  and   fears,   his 
friendships  and  aversions,  his  pride  at  success  and  his  anger 
at  defeat,  even  his  follies  and  weaknesses,  his  ailments  of 
body  and  of  temper, — they  are  all  poured  out  absolutely 
without  reserve  or  consciousness.     Few  men  dare  to  be  so 
frank  even  with  themselves  as  this  man  is  before  the  woman 
he  has  left  at  home  in  Ireland.     But  most  amazing  is  his 
tenderness  for  her,  the  pathetic  solicitude  on  every  page. 
This  is  a  side  of  Swift's  nature  that,  were  it  not  for  the 
Journal,    we   could   hardly   have   guessed.      He    frequently 
drops   into    that    "little   language"    which    is   obviously   the 
broken  utterance  of  her  childhood  that  he  had  never  for- 
gotten.    He  writes  always  and  everything.     He  snatches  a 
few  moments  when  he  comes  home  weary  at  night  from 
Mr.  Harley's  council-chamber  or  Mrs.  Masham's  levee;  he 
writes  abed  in  the  morning,  when  that  scoundrel  Patrick, 
if  for  a  wonder  he  isn't  drunk,  is  laying  the  fire  and  the  room 
is  a-warming.     He  tells  her  how  his  affairs  are  going,  how 
he  has  dined  with  Mr.  St.  John  and  met  Mat.  Prior,  how 
Mr.  Addison's  paper  gets  on,   or  more   imaginary  adven- 
tures,— how  he  met  the  Queen  yesterday,  "and  she  made  me 
a  courtesy  in  a  familiar  way,  'How  de  do,  How  de  do,  How 
does  M.   D.   in   Ireland'   and  I  considered  she  was  only  a 
queen  and  so  excused  her";  how  he  has  lodgings  in  Bury 


210  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Street  at  eight  shillings  a  week,  plaguy  dear — he  tells  her 
everything  just  as  it  comes  into  his  head,  and  when  the  big 
sheet  is  full,  he  folds  it  over — "faith,  'tis  a  whole  treatise" 
— and  he  seals  it,  and  directs  it,  and  then — he  begins  an- 
other. Nothing  can  be  conceived  more  true  and  tender. 
There  is  an  inexpressible  kindness  in  it,  all  the  more  im- 
pressive in  such  a  rudely  imperious  nature,  a  sort  of  leonine 
and  shaggy  gentleness. 

And  it  would  seem  that  the  Journal  ought  to  be  con- 
clusive as  to  the  nature  of  the  relation  between  Swift  and 
Esther  Johnson.  One  thing  is  certain:  that  relation  must 
have  been  determined  and  perfectly  understood  on  both 
sides  before  the  Journal  could  have  been  written.  And 
surely  there  can  be  no  mistaking  the  temper  in  which  it  is 
written — intimate,  playful,  tender,  solicitous,  but  perfectly 
passionless.  This  is  not  the  love  of  a  husband  to  his  wife, 
or  of  a  lover  to  his  mistress.  It  is  the  wise,  gentle,  almost 
paternal  affection  of  a  guardian  or  an  elder  brother.  It  is 
Prospero  to  Miranda.  There  is  not  a  word  in  the  Journal 
that  Stella  could  have  mistaken  for  any  other  affection  or 
construed  into  any  promise  or  expectation  of  marriage. 

After  more  than  a  year  of  tedious  negotiation  the  Treaty 
of  Utrecht  was  finally  signed,  April,  1713.  Swift  felt  that 
it  was  now  time  for  him  to  retire  from  the  struggle  of 
politics.  He  was  the  more  ready  to  do  so  because  he  fore- 
saw the  inevitable  break-up  of  the  Tory  party.  Its  two 
leaders  had  never  been  fitted  to  work  together,  and  were 
now  growing  more  openly  hostile  to  each  other.  Harley 
(who  had  been  made  Lord  Oxford)  was  essentially  a  weak 
and  hesitating  man,  who  preferred  a  cautious  and  moderate 
policy  principally  because  he  never  felt  sure  of  his  way. 
Bolingbroke,  on  the  contrary,  was  bold  to  rashness,  a  bril- 
liant but  not  a  safe  leader,  who  found  the  indecision  and 
slowness  of  his  colleague  intolerable.  There  were  corre- 
sponding divisions  in  the  party.  The  extreme  Tories  chafed 
at  the  hesitation  of  the  ministry  and  clamored  for  sweeping 
partisan  measures.  The  Moderates,  or  "Whimsicals"  as 
they  were  called,   were  suspicious  of  Jacobite  plans   and 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  211 

inclined  to  an  alliance  with  the  Whigs.  During  the  previous 
year,  17 12,  Swift  had  done  his  best  to  compose  these 
differences.  His  two  most  important  pamphlets  of  that 
year  were  addressed,  one  to  the  extreme  Tories,  A  Letter 
to  the  October  Club,  in  which  he  ingeniously  defends  the 
moderation  of  the  ministry,  and  the  other  to  the  most  mod- 
erate Tories,  A  Letter  to  a  li'hig  Lord,  in  which  he  tries  to 
show  that  even  a  moderate  Whig,  if  he  be  loyal,  is  bound  at 
that  juncture  to  support  the  Queen  and  her  ministry.  But 
the  effort  had  little  success.  The  spirit  of  faction  was 
increasing;  the  differences  between  the  ministers  were 
widening.  Swift  began  to  tire  of  it  all.  Yet  to  go  back,  to 
Laracor  without  some  ecclesiastical  preferment  in  recog- 
nition of  his  services  would  hardly  be  consistent  with  self- 
respect.  He  could  not  allow  himself  to  be  called  a  tool  that 
ministers  had  dropped  when  they  could  no  longer  use.  As 
he  wrote  to  Stella,  "impertinent  people  would  condole  with 
me."  He  had  never  been  willing  to  ask  preferment  for 
himself,  often  as  he  had  done  so  for  others.  He  would  not 
now;  but  he  gave  Harley  to  understand  that  if  anything 
were  intended  for  him,  it  must  be  conferred  at  once.  At 
the  end  of  April  he  was  appointed  to  the  deanery  of  St. 
Patrick's,  Dublin.  The  whole  affair  was  little  to  his  liking. 
It  had  been  arranged  only  after  vexatious  difficulties  and 
delays.  Harley  had  been,  as  usual,  vacillating  and  ineffi- 
cient. A  vacancy  had  been  made  only  by  promoting  the 
incumbent  of  St.  Patrick's  to  a  bishop's  chair  that  Swift  felt 
might  have  been  more  justly  given  to  himself;  but  the 
Queen  refused  to  consider  him  for  a  bishopric.  He  hoped 
that  the  ministry  might  keep  him  in  England;  St.  Patrick's 
meant  banishment  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  from  his  most 
intimate  friends  to  a  country  he  hated.  But  Swift  swallowed 
his  disappointment, — that  had  now  become  his  habit, — and 
went  over  to  be  installed. 

He  had  hardly  reached  Dublin,  however,  before  he  was 
recalled  to  reconcile  if  possible  the  jarring  ministers.  "We 
want  you  extremely,"  wrote  Harley's  secretary,  Erasmus 
Lewis.     Swift  delayed  a  little,  but  at  the  first  of  September 


212  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

he  returned,  to  spend  one  more  winter  in  London.  During 
this  winter  he  was  involved  in  a  controversy  with  his  old 
friend  Steele.  Just  before  he  went  over  to  Dublin  he  had 
been  greatly  provoked  by  an  unjust  and  blundering  allusion 
to  himself  in  Steele's  Guardian;  and  now,  when  Steele  at- 
tacked the  ministry  for  not  carrying  out  the  terms  of  the 
peace,  Swift  replied  in  two  pamphlets  in  which  Steele  is 
punished  unmercifully.  These  pamphlets,  The  Importance 
of  the  "Guardian"  and  The  Public  Spirit  of  the  Whigs,  are 
examples,  the  one  of  Swift's  most  scathing  sarcasm,  the 
other  of  his  fiercest  scorn.  But  in  the  more  important 
matter  of  bringing  the  ministers  together  and  healing  the 
divisions  in  the  party,  he  could  do  nothing.  He  could  not 
help  seeing  that  Oxford,  to  whom  he  had  always  been  the 
more  attached,  baffled  by  the  difficulties  of  his  position,  was 
sinking  into  utter  helplessness.  Bolingbroke  was  getting 
the  government  into  his  own  hands,  and  making  ready  to 
turn  it  over  to  the  Pretender  as  soon  as  the  Queen  should 
die.  Of  these  Jacobite  schemes,  however,  it  is  certain  that 
Swift  had  no  knowledge.  Indeed  the  suspicion  that  there 
were  some  matters  on  which  the  ministry  did  not  now  take 
him  into  their  confidence,  was  one  cause  of  his  vexation. 
In  the  spring  of  17 14  he  wrote  an  admirable  tract,  Free 
Thoughts  on  the  Present  State  of  Affairs,  in  which  he  once 
more  urged  a  temperate  and  comprehensive  policy;  but 
Bolingbroke,  to  whom  the  manuscript  was  submitted,  made 
such  changes  in  it  that  Swift  refused  to  print  it.  In  May, 
wearied  out  and  hopeless,  he  withdrew  into  the  country  for 
a  little  rest  with  an  old  school-fellow  at  Letcombe.  While 
he  was  there  the  crisis  came.  Oxford  was  dismissed  five 
days  before  the  death  of  the  Queen,  and  Bolingbroke  for 
the  moment  supposed  himself  secure  in  his  plans.  But  he 
was  outplayed  by  the  Whigs  in  the  very  last  move  of  his 
game.  Anne  was  induced  to  place  the  Lord  Treasurer's 
staff  in  the  hands  of  the  Earl  of  Shrewsbury  on  Thursday 
afternoon;  on  Sunday  morning,  August  1,  she  died,  and 
King  George  I  was  proclaimed.  "What  a  world  is  this,  and 
how  does  Fortune  banter  us !"  wrote  Bolingbroke  to  Swift 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  213 

on  Monday.  Within  a  month  Harley  was  in  the  Tower, 
and  Bolingbroke  in  exile;  the  Tory  party  was  dissolved. 
Swift  hurried  up  to  London  to  see  all  his  old  friends  once 
more  at  the  Scriblerus  Club,  and  then  he  went  over  to 
Dublin.  Only  twice  in  the  thirty  years  of  life  that  remained 
to  him  was  he  ever  in  England  again.  The  most  brilliant 
chapter  in  his  life  was  closed. 

IX 

As  far  as  literary  or  political  effort  is  concerned,  the 
next  six  years  of  the  life  of  Swift  are  a  blank.  He  had  no 
heart  for  further  public  work.  His  party  was  ruined.  He 
was  cut  off  from  the  companionship  of  all  congenial  friends, 
and  set  among  strangers  who  were  indifferent  or  hostile. 
At  his  appointment  to  St.  Patrick's,  the  Archbishop  of 
Dublin  had  written  him  a  very  chilly  letter  hinting  that 
perhaps  the  best  thing  Swift  could  do  in  his  office  was  to 
put  a  spire  on  the  cathedral,  "an  ornament,"  said  the  Arch- 
bishop, "much  admired  in  these  parts. ''  Even  the  mob  was 
against  him;  on  the  morning  of  his  installation  he  had  found 
tacked  upon  the  door  of  his  cathedral  some  doggerel  verses: 

Look  down,  St.  Patrick,  look,  we  pray, 
On  this  thy  church  and  steeple ; 

Convert  the  dean  on  this  great  day, 
Or  else — God  help  the  people! 

Under  the  pressure  of  the  last  three  years  his  health 
had  been  breaking,  and  the  fits  of  deafness  and  giddiness 
he  had  suffered  from  childhood  grew  more  frequent  and 
severe.  From  this  time  his  moody  and  misanthropic  temper 
gained  upon  him. 

And  besides  all  this,  there  was  one  sore  anxiety  which 
he  could  not  reveal  even  to  his  nearest  friends.  Among  the 
many  doors  opened  to  Swift  during  his  London  life  was  that 
of  a  Mrs.  Vanhomrigh,  a  widow  with  two  daughters. 
Her  house  in  Bury  Street  was  near  Swift's  lodgings;  he 
often  dined  there,  and  found  easy  comfort  and  good  com- 


214  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

pany,  without  the  pretension  and  stiff  conventionalities  that 
he  hated.    When  he  took  lodgings  out  at  Chelsea  for  his 
health,  he  used  to  leave  his  gown  and  wig  there  over  night 
and  call  for  them  when  he  came  in  of  a  morning.    Whether 
thrifty  Mrs.  Van  had  any  designs  in  making  her  house  so 
convenient  for  the  great  Dr.  Swift,  I'm  sure  I  don't  know, 
but  he  was  certainly  often  there,  and  the  family  soon  became 
his  intimate  friends.    The  elder  of  the  two  daughters,  Miss 
Hester    Vanhomrigh,    was    nineteen    years    of    age    when 
Swift  first  met  her.     She  was  not  a  beauty;  but  she  had  what 
Swift   always  liked  better  than  beauty,   quick  wit   and  a 
curious  mind.     Swift  gave  her  advice  about  her  reading, 
and  for  a  time  seems  to  have  been  a  kind  of  teacher  for  her. 
The  ignorance  and  frivolity  of  young  ladies  in  his  day  was 
a  frequent  matter  of  sarcastic  comment  with  him,  and  when- 
ever he  saw  quick  parts  and  love  of  study  in  any  lady  of  his 
acquaintance  he  was  always  ready  to  encourage  them.    The 
story  of  Swift's   further   acquaintance   with   Hester   Van- 
homrigh has  been  greatly  elaborated  by  the  romantic  imagi- 
nation of  the  biographers;  but  all  we  really  know  of  it  is 
drawn   from   some  letters   that   Miss   Vanhomrigh   wrote 
and  some  verses  that  Swift  wrote.1     When,  in  17 13,  the 
acquaintance  took  a  new,  and  to  Swift  a  most  surprising 
turn,  he  wrote  an  account  of  it  in  poetic  form,  under  the 
title,  Cadenus  and  Vanessa, — that  is,  Decanus,  or  the  Dean, 
and  Essa  Van.     These  verses  he  sent  Miss  Vanhomrigh, 
evidently  as  a  kind  of  explanation  meant  for  her  only.     He 
hoped  she  would  see  the  embarrassment  in  which  she  had 
placed  him,  and  would  so  change  her  conduct  as  to  relieve 
him  from  it.2    We  learn  from  Swift's  verses  that  his  pupil 
one  day  astounded  him  by  a  declaration  of  love ;  and  that  he, 
in  surprise  and  mortification,  was  utterly  at  a  loss  what  to 

1Our  sources  of  information  are  now  somewhat  enlarged  by  the  recently 
published  Vanessa  and  her  Correspondance  with  Jonathan  Swift,  ed.,  with 
an  Introduction,  by  A.  Martin  Freeman  (Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin  Co.,  1921). 
[L.  B.  G.] 

'The  Cadenus  and  Vanessa  was  revised  in  1719,  and  it  is  this  revised 
version  that  has  come  down  to  us.  The  later  form  contains  some  passages 
that  can  apply  only  to  a  later  stage  of  the  acquaintance. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  215 

do  or  say.  From  this  time,  for  about  ten  years,  poor  Miss 
Vanhomrigh's  hopeless  passion  was  the  burden  of  his  life, 
half  vexation,  half  grief.  He  could  not  return  it;  he  could 
not  shake  it  off.  When  he  came  over  to  Dublin  in  17 14  she 
followed  him  with  letters.  Her  mother  was  now  dead,  and 
she  besought  his  advice  and  assistance.  He  tried  to  write 
her  merely  as  a  friend;  she  made  it  impossible.  He  tried 
not  to  write  her  at  all;  she  sent  him  letters  of  passionate 
entreaty  for  a  word.  She  came  over  to  Ireland,  and,  in  spite 
of  his  expostulations  resided  for  a  time  in  Dublin.  He  tried 
— rather  foolishly — to  marry  her  to  somebody  else.  He 
tried  to  enlist  her  interest  in  matters  of  business  or  of  letters. 
But  nothing  could  avail.  After  a  short  residence  in  Dublin, 
she  retired  with  her  sister  to  a  small  estate  at  Celbridge. 
She  was  sinking  under  pulmonary  disease,  aggravated 
perhaps  by  her  hopeless  passion,  and  in  1723  she  died.  One 
can  feel  nothing  but  pity  for  either  of  the  characters  in  this 
pathetic  story.  Surely  Swift  can  be  charged  with  nothing 
worse  than  pardonable  blindness.  A  bachelor  of  forty-five 
deeply  immersed  in  the  affairs  of  Europe  could  hardly  be 
expected  to  detect  the  first  symptoms  of  such  a  fatal  attach- 
ment; and  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  to  show  that 
he  selfishly  dallied  with  that  affection,  or  did  anything  to 
encourage  it  after  it  had  once  been  disclosed  to  him.  It  is 
easy  to  say  that  he  should  have  broken  the  acquaintance  off 
at  once  and  forever;  but  Vanessa's  repeated  requests  for  his 
assistance  as  well  as  his  affection  clearly  made  it  difficult  to 
do  so  without  seeming  cruelty.  His  conduct  may  have  been 
unwise;  but  it  was  kindly  meant. 

Vanessa's  passion  must  almost  certainly  have  been 
known  to  Stella;  '  but  what  were  her  feelings  in  the  matter 
we  have  no  means  of  telling,  though  it  may  not  be  difficult 
to  conjecture.  It  has  usually  been  believed  that  her  jealousy 
was  so  far  excited  that,  in  17  16,  she  insisted  on  a  marriage 
with  the  dean.  Nearly  all  the  early  biographers  accept  this 
story  of  Swift's  marriage  with  Stella,  though  it  is  admitted 

1  Swift  speaks  of  Mra.  Vanhomrigh  and  her  family  no  less  than  icventy- 
nine   times   in   the  Journal. 


216  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

that  they  never  saw  each  other  save  in  the  presence  of  a 
third  person,  the  marriage  was  never  publicly  owned,  and 
was  unknown  to  most  of  Swift's  nearest  friends.  It  is 
highly  improbable  that  any  such  marriage  ever  took  place. 
The  evidence  cannot  be  recited  here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
the  meager,  conflicting,  and  second-hand  testimony  usually 
cited  cannot  be  accepted  as  proof  of  a  marriage  so  purpose- 
less, so  utterly  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  that  long 
friendship,  so  contrary  to  the  awful  sincerity  of  the  dean 
himself.  Surely  if  Swift  was  married  to  Esther  Johnson  in 
1 716  his  conduct  in  concealing  it  from  Hester  Vanhomrigh 
was  something  more  than  imprudent. 

But  if  it  is  admitted  that  Swift's  cynical  misanthropy 
grew  upon  him  in  these  years,  it  should  also  be  remembered 
that  during  all  his  Dublin  residence  he  performed  the  duties 
of  his  clerical  office  with  punctilious  fidelity.  Nay,  he  did 
much  more  than  that.  His  personal  charities  were  careful 
and  abundant.  A  third  of  his  income  he  always  set  aside 
for  benevolence.  "He  gave  away  five  pounds,"  said  Delany, 
"easier  than  most  men  give  five  shillings,  and  I  never  saw 
poor  so  carefully  and  conscientiously  attended  to  as  those  of 
his  parish  always  were."  But  he  was  always  careful  that 
his  charity  should  not  foster  idleness  or  beggary.  He  knew 
that  if  any  people  needed  to  be  taught  the  lesson  of  thrift 
and  small  economy  it  was  that  shiftless  Irish  people. 

One  gets  glimpses,  now  and  then,  in  these  later  years,  of 
his  relations  with  his  poor  people,  of  his  grim  humor,  with 
solid  wisdom  and  sometimes  a  gleam  of  tenderness  under- 
neath it.  He  called  on  a  poor  farmer  one  day,  who  received 
him  in  his  Sunday  best,  his  wife  in  silk  and  ribbons  and  his 
gawky  boy  in  a  brand  new  lace  cap.  "Ah,  Mr.  Reilly,"  said 
the  dean,  "I'd  like  to  go  out  and  ride  over  your  estate." 
"Estate,  is  it?"  said  the  puzzled  farmer.  "Deil  a  foot  o'  land 
belongs  to  me  or  any  of  my  generation." — "Ah,  so,  we'll 
stay  in  then;  but  when  am  I  to  see  Mrs.  Reilly?"  "Mrs. 
Reilly,  please  your  reverence,  don't  you  see  her  there  before 
ye?"  "That,  Mrs.  Reilly,  impossible!  I've  heard  Mrs. 
Reilly  was  a  very  prudent  woman,  and  I'm  sure  she'd  never 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  217 

dress  herself  out  in  silk  and  ornaments  fit  only  for  ladies  of 
fashion."  When  the  good  lady,  taking  this  rather  broad 
hint,  came  in  a  few  moments  later,  Swift  met  her  with  "Ah, 
ah,  indeed,  Mrs.  Reilly,  I'm  heartily  glad  to  see  you;  this 
husband  of  yours  tried  to  palm  off  a  fine  lady  on  me  for  you, 
but  I  wasn't  to  be  taken  in  so."  He  had  grabbed  the  young- 
ster's cap  off  and  torn  it  to  bits;  but  on  going  away  he  gave 
him  back  the  rags  in  a  five-pound  note. 

He  used  to  have  some  wretched  old  woman  in  almost 
every  dirty  lane  to  whom  he  was  accustomed  to  carry  fre- 
quent aid  in  person,  but  he  always  insisted  that  they  should 
have  some  employment;  one  of  them  knitted  the  dean's 
stockings,  and  another  mended  them.  Vexed  by  the  in- 
creasing pauperism  about  him,  he  invented  a  plan  by  which 
the  deserving  poor  of  his  parish  could  be  designated  for 
assistance  and  the  sturdy  beggars  set  at  work.  The  first 
five  hundred  pounds  he  saved  he  set  apart  as  a  loan  fund  to 
aid  poor  Irish  tradesmen  in  their  efforts  to  struggle  into 
business.  He  helped  more  than  two  hundred  families  from 
this  fund.  It  is  no  wonder  that  little  by  little  the  Irish  people 
began  to  find  him  the  truest  of  friends,  even  before  his  fa- 
mous writings  in  their  behalf.  One  likes  to  remember  his 
generosity,  his  kindness,  his  faithfulness  in  duty,  during 
those  closing  years;  one  likes  to  remember  the  tribute  of 
loyal  reverence  and  admiration  paid  him  by  a  host  of  humble 
people  when  his  great  friends  were  dropping  away. 

In  his  own  household  he  was  a  strict  but  just  master, 
and  his  servants  soon  found  him  a  generous  one  too.  He 
gathered  them  for  daily  prayers  as  regularly  as  if  it  were  a 
cathedral  service;  but  so  quietly  that  visitors  were  in  his 
house  for  weeks  without  knowing  it.  He  insisted  on  obe- 
dience, but  almost  always  tempered  the  severity  of  his  com- 
mands with  a  cynical  humor  under  which  they  soon  learned 
to  see  not  only  good  sense  but  good  nature;  and  he  seldom 
objected  to  a  bit  of  Irish  impudence  if  it  was  seasoned  with 
wit. 

While  on  a  journey  once  with  two  servants,  the  butler  on 
being  bidden   to  clean   his  master's   boots   in    the   morning 


218  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

growled  that  they'd  be  dirty  again  soon  enough  if  he  did 
clean  them.  "Ah,  sir,"  said  Swift,  "have  you  had  your 
breakfast  yet?"  "No,  that  I  haven't  at  all."  "Well,  I 
have,"  said  Swift,  "and  it  makes  no  difference  with  you, 
you'll  be  hungry  again  soon  enough,  if  you  do  eat;  so  we'll 
start  on," — and  off  they  went.  A  mile  on  the  road,  a 
stranger  met  them  with  the  inquiry  where  they  were  going. 
"Begorra,"  said  the  hungry  butler,  "we're  goin'  to  heaven, 
for  the  dean  he's  a-praying  and  I'm  a-fasting."  Swift  gave 
the  man  a  half  crown  for  his  wit,  and  they  stopped  at  the 
next  inn  for  breakfast.  Such  stories,  a  multitude  of  which 
have  gathered  about  the  private  life  of  the  dean,  are  cer- 
tainly trifles;  but  they  show  that  underneath  his  rough 
exterior  and  crabbed  eccentricities  of  manner,  there  was  a 
man's  heart,  just  and  not  unkindly,  and  that  plain  people 
who  had  no  humbug  about  them  could  find  it  easily  enough. 

x 

When  Swift,  in  172 1,  took  up  the  pen  that  had  lain 
seven  years  idle,  it  was  in  the  cause  of  Ireland.  The 
wretchedness  of  Ireland  in  the  first  half  of  the  last  century 
as  it  stands  recorded  on  the  temperate  pages  of  modern 
historians  seems  incredible.1  Conquered  again  and  again, 
the  island  had  at  last  been  subdued.  The  Irish  had  no  other 
notion  of  protest  than  armed  resistance;  and  armed  resist- 
ance was  now  hopeless.  After  the  revolt  of  1689  had  been 
put  down,  the  country  was  placed  under  that  Penal  Code 
which,  whether  it  was  a  crime  or  a  blunder,  must  be  remem- 
bered as  the  disgrace  of  English  legislation.  But  atrocious 
as  were  these  laws  against  the  Roman  Catholics,  they  had 
less  to  do  with  the  misery  of  Ireland  than  England's  com- 
mercial tyranny.  England  was  not  very  wise  or  generous  in 
the  treatment  of  any  of  her  dependencies  in  the  eighteenth 
century;  and  she  regarded  none  with  such  contempt  and 
jealousy.  As  one  form  after  another  of  Irish  industry  had 
risen  into  prominence,  between  1660  and  1700,  with  cruel 
1  See,  for  example,  Lecky's  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Ch.  VII. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  219 

ingenuity  it  was  crushed  by  commercial  legislation  of  un- 
exampled severity.     Ireland  was  the  green  pasture  land  of 
Europe;  England  now  forbade  the  export  of  her  cattle1 
and  ruined  her  graziers  at  a  stroke.     They  turned  their 
pastures   into   sheep-walks   and  began   to   manufacture   the 
wool.      This   industry  promised   in  twenty  years  to  make 
Ireland    wealthy;    England    forbade    all    exports    of    Irish 
woolens,2  crushed  the  growing  industry,  and  drove  a  large 
population  into  utter  poverty.     By  other  acts  Ireland  was 
iorbidden  to  export  anything  to  the  colonies  or  import  any- 
thing from  them,  unless  by  way  of  England.    All  commerce 
and  all  industry  were  blasted.    The  mass  of  the  Irish  people, 
too  improvident  by  nature,  were  brought  to  the  verge  of 
beggary.    And  what  was  even  worse,  the  whole  people  were 
sunk  in  apathy.     The  national  spirit  seemed  broken.     Self- 
government  they  had  none.    There  was,  to  be  sure,  an  Irish 
parliament;  but  it  had  no  independence,  and  could  pass  only 
such  acts  as  had  first  been  approved  in  England.     Almost 
every   office   in   the    Irish    government,    from    the    Viceroy 
down,  was  filled  by  Englishmen  sent  over  from  London, 
who  were  greedy  for  the  meager  spoil  of  a  wasted  country. 
Most  of  them  never  resided  in  Ireland,  and  there  were  many 
who  landed  at  Ringsend  on  Saturday  night,  qualified  for 
office  by  taking  the  sacrament  on  Sunday,  took  the  oaths 
Monday,  and  sailed  back  to  England  Tuesday  to  draw  their 
salaries  without  seeing  Ireland  again  for  the  year.     In  the 
established  Church,  things  were  not  much  better.     With  the 
hatred  of  Roman  Catholics  on  the  one  side  and  the  jealousy 
of  Presbyterians  on  the  other,  it  would  have  had  a  hard 
struggle  if  wisely  governed;  but  it  was  not  wisely  governed. 
Its  bishops  usually  aimed  to  smother  any  national  feeling 
and  make  Ireland  and  the  Irish  church  the  servile  depen- 
dents  of  England — and   to   provide  handsomely   for  their 
own  greed.     Said  Swift  bitterly,  "Excellent  moral  men  have 
been    selected   ...    [in    England    to    govern    the    church]. 
But  it  unfortunately  has  uniformly  happened  that  as  these 

'By  the  Acts  of  1665  and  16S0. 
'By  the  Act  of  1699. 


220  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

worthy  divines  crossed  Hounslow  Heath  on  their  road  to 
Ireland  to  take  possession  of  their  bishoprics  they  have  been 
regularly  robbed  and  murdered  by  the  highwaymen  fre- 
quenting that  common,  who  seize  upon  their  robes  and 
patents,  come  over  to  Ireland,  and  are  consecrated  bishops 
in  their  stead."  Unusual  misrule  and  corruption,  bare- 
legged beggary,  and  a  carnival  of  vulgar  crime, — that  was 
the  state  of  Ireland. 

Swift  looked  on  in  silence  for  seven  years.  The  spec- 
tacle of  Irish  degradation  filled  him  with  mingled  contempt 
and  indignation.  He  knew  that  the  ills  of  Ireland  were 
largely  due  to  English  misgovernment;  and  it  seemed  to  him 
that  those  ills  were  rapidly  growing  intolerable  under  the 
venal  administration  of  Walpole.  At  last  when  in  1720 
some  measures  of  the  Whigs  showed  anew  their  determina- 
tion to  keep  both  the  Irish  church  and  the  Irish  people  in 
slavish  dependence  upon  England,  Swift  could  contain  his 
anger  no  longer.  In  a  pamphlet,  A  Proposal  for  the  Uni- 
versal Use  of  Irish  Manufacture,  he  exhorts  the  Irish 
people  to  refuse  all  English  imports.  Burn  everything  that 
comes  from  England,  he  says — except  the  coals  and  the 
people.  Live  on  your  own  resources.  In  this  first  pamphlet 
of  the  Irish  controversy  Swift's  style  is,  if  possible,  more 
terse  and  vigorous  than  ever,  his  irony  more  keen,  and  there 
is  a  note  of  indignant  pity  not  previously  heard  in  his 
writing.     But  his  great  opportunity  came  three  years  later. 

In  1722  the  English  government  granted  to  one  William 
Wood  a  patent  for  the  coinage  of  copper  for  Ireland. 
There  was  undoubtedly  a  need  of  small  coin  in  Ireland;  but 
the  amount  named  in  the  patent,  £108,000,  was  vastly  in 
excess  of  the  need.  The  patent  had  been  obtained  only  by 
the  most  notorious  jobbery.  Wood  paid  £10,000  in  one 
bribe  into  the  capacious  lap  of  the  Duchess  of  Kendal, — the 
frowsy  mistress  of  George  I, — and  this  was  only  one  of  a 
series  of  blackmail  payments  which  various  officials  had  to 
levy  on  the  transaction.  And  what  to  Swift  was  worst  of 
all,  the  whole  affair  had  been  managed  in  England,  in  utter 
indifference  to  the  wishes  of  the  Irish  people,  and  without 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  221 

so  much  as  consulting  the  Irish  Viceroy,  Privy  Council,  or 
Parliament.     But  when,  next  year,  Wood  attempted  to  in- 
troduce   his   copper,    he   met   with   unexpected   opposition. 
The  Irish  Parliament,  for  a  wonder,  found  spirit  to  protest, 
and  the  popular  indignation  slowly  grew  to  such  a  pitch 
that,  in  the  summer  of  1724,  the  English  government  was 
forced  to  appoint  a  committee  of  inquiry  upon  the  coinage. 
It  was  now  that  Swift  saw  his  opportunity.      It  was  gen- 
erally believed — and  with  good  reason — that  Wood's  coins 
were  below  their  professed  value.     Swift  seized  upon  this 
belief  as   the   readiest  instrument  of   agitation.      His   real 
object  was  to  arouse  the  indignation  of  the  Irish  people 
against  an  imposition  upon  their  rights;  but  he  knew  this 
could    not    be    done    by    a    discussion    of    constitutional 
grievances.    Tell  your  neighbor  a  thief  is  at  his  pocket-book 
if  you  wish  him  to  stir.     Swift  addressed  directly  to  the 
people  a  letter,  printed  in  the  cheapest  manner,  couched  in 
the   homely  phrases   of   a   tradesman,    and   signed   M.   B. 
Draper.     In  this  letter,  by  all  those  arts  of  which  he  was  so 
consummate  a  master,  he  urges  the  tradespeople  and  labor- 
ers to  refuse  Wood's  copper.    Assuming  it  to  be  a  fact  that 
the  coin  is  under  value,  he  gravely  drives  that  fact  into  all 
sorts  of   humorous   exaggerations   and  inference.     Shrewd 
wit,  biting  irony,  telling  illustration,  bits  of  sound  economic 
doctrine  are  all  conveyed  in  a  style  so  simple  that  thousands 
who  couldn't  read  a  word  of  it  could  understand  every  word 
when  it  was  read  to  them.     When  the  report  of  the  Com- 
mittee   was    published    weakly    defending    the    patent,    the 
Drapier  issued  in  quick  succession  two  more  letters  heaping 
infinite  ridicule  upon  the  pretended  vindication  of  Wood, 
and   calling  upon  the  gentry  to   unite   with   the   people   in 
indignant  protest   against  this   attempt  to   enslave   a    free 
nation  in  order  to  enrich  a  scheming  English  ironmonger. 
Two  months  later  when  popular  feeling  was  at  its  height, 
Swift  sought  to  turn  it  to.lasting  account  by  his  noble  Fourth 
Letter,  To  the  Whole  People  of  Ireland.    Here  he  leaves  all 
little  grievances  aside.     The  great  wrong  in  this  coinage  is 
that  it  was  forced  upon  Ireland  without  the  knowledge  or 


222  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

consent  of  her  government.  Passing  from  the  matter  of 
the  coin  altogether,  he  strikes  boldly  against  the  English 
doctrine  of  the  dependence  of  Ireland.  Ireland  is  a  free 
nation,  of  coordinate  rights  with  England  under  the  British 
crown.  As  such  she  deserves  and  must  have  the  same 
rights  of  self-government  as  England  enjoys,  for  (and  here 
his  phrase  strangely  resembles  that  of  the  American  col- 
onists half  a  century  later)  "government  without  the  consent 
of  the  governed  is  the  very  definition  of  slavery." 

A  storm  of  agitation  followed.  The  government  chose 
to  consider  the  pamphlet  seditious,  and  offered  a  reward  of 
£300  for  information  of  the  author.  Everybody  knew  per- 
fectly well  who  the  author  was;  but  no  one  dreamed  of 
informing.  The  printer  was  arrested;  but  the  grand  jury 
persistently  refused  to  find  a  bill  against  him.  Every  tavern 
had  its  Drapier's  sign.  Wood  was  derided  in  street  ballads, 
and  burned  in  effigy  every  night.  The  English  government 
were  powerless  in  the  face  of  this  new  kind  of  Irish  oppo- 
sition, which  took  the  form  not  of  midnight  murder  and 
petty  rebellion,  but  of  constitutional  agitation.  Wood's 
patent  was  withdrawn.  It  is  not  easy  to  overestimate  the 
influence  of  this  victory.  It  marks  an  era  in  Irish  politics. 
From  that  time,  as  Mr.  Lecky  says,  "rebellion  has  been  an 
anachronism  and  a  mistake.  The  age  of  Grattan  and 
O'Connell  had  begun." 

XI 

During  the  months  of  the  Drapier  agitation  Swift  was 
contemplating  a  visit  to  his  old  friends'  in  London.  He  had 
kept  up  his  correspondence  with  several  of  them, — there  is 
no  more  delightful  bundle  of  letters  in  the  language  than 
those  that  passed  between  these  friends  in  the  years  17 14  to 
1726, — and  of  late  they  had  been  especially  urgent  to  see 
his  face  once  more.  Swift  hesitated.  He  dreaded  a  meet- 
ing that  must  have  seemed  to  those  men  like  a  satire  on 
human  ambition;  he  dreaded  still  more,  as  he  wrote  a  friend, 
the  inevitable  return  "to  this  enslaved  country  where  I  am 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  223 

condemned  to  pass  my  existence."  But  he  went  at  last.  In 
1726  the  old  Scriblerus  Club  met  again,  "like  mariners 
after  a  storm"  as  Arbuthnot  said,  and  talked  over  the 
literary  plans  they  had  amused  themselves  with  twelve  years 
before.  The  circle  had  been  broken  by  the  deaths  of  Harley 
and  of  Prior;  Atterbury  was  in  exile;  but  the  others  were 
there,  Bolingbroke,  Pope,  Arbuthnot,  Gay,  Peterborough, 
Bathurst.  In  the  days  of  Queen  Anne  they  had  projected  a 
kind  of  philosophic  satire,  to  be  done  between  them,  and 
published  as  the  Memoirs  of  the  Club.  The  plan  had  been 
abandoned;  but  it  probably  furnished  the  original  motive 
for  two  great  satires.  In  1726,  Pope  was  already  at  work 
upon  The  Dunciad;  and  Swift  brought  with  him  to  London 
the  manuscript  of  Gulliver's  Travels.  Some  sketch  of  it  had 
probably  been  formed  before  he  left  London  in  17 14;  at 
all  events  he  had  certainly  been  writing  upon  it,  at  odd 
hours,  for  five  or  six  years.  Gulliver  was  read  over  the 
tables  of  the  Club  with  varying  comment  and  revision,  dur- 
ing the  weeks  of  the  summer,  and  in  November  it  was 
published. 

Gulliver  is  the  most  familiar  of  all  Swift's  works;  it 
probably  deserves  also  to  be  called  the  greatest.  Nothing 
better  shows  the  play  of  his  humor,  his  marvelous  fertility 
of  invention,  the  range  and  intensity  of  his  satire.  Swift  is 
said  to  have  been  apprehensive  that  the  Gulliver  might 
betray  some  weakening  of  his  powers;  but  his  intellect  and 
imagination  seem  to  have  worked  on  with  unabated  vigor, 
perhaps  with  morbid  energy,  until  after  1730.  Strange 
that  this  most  terrible  of  satires  should  now  sometimes  be 
thought  of  as  a  children's  book  of  wonder  stories.  The 
narrative  is  managed  with  such  ingenious  simplicity,  the 
incidents  and  imagery,  though  striking,  are  so  vivid  and  so 
consistent,  that  at  least  the  first  two  books  have  been  read  by 
thousands  of  ingenuous  youth  without  a  suspicion  of  their 
satiric  import.  But  it  is  to  be  hoped  the  time  may  never 
come  when  the  underlying  spirit  of  the  Gulliver  will  be  in- 
telligible to  any  child.  In  the  first  two  books,  indeed,  the 
temper   is   not   altogether   unhealthy;   the   satire   is   not  yet 


224  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

savage  or  bestial.  They  were  probably  written  during  the 
earlier  years  of  Swift's  Dublin  residence,  and  the  satire  is 
directed  against  that  political  selfishness  and  ambition  which 
in  recent  years  had  so  often  excited  his  indignation  and 
contempt.  But  in  the  later  books  the  object  and  the  temper 
of  the  satire  change.  Swift's  long  exile,  his  sense  of  dis- 
appointment and  failure  in  life,  his  dread  of  the  physical 
disease  that  was  steadily  undermining  his  strength  and 
threatened  to  drive  him  mad  at  last,  above  all  his  constant 
enforced  contact  with  the  misery  and  squalor  of  Irish  life, — 
all  these  things  are  written  darkly  into  the  last  two  books  of 
Gulliver.  As  the  satire  draws  toward  its  awful  close,  its 
themes  are  no  longer  the  folly  of  ambition,  the  littleness  of 
power,  not  even  the  hollowness  of  philosophy  and  all  that 
calls  itself  wisdom,  but  rather  the  burdens  of  our  life,  the 
inevitable  ills  of  the  flesh,  the  slow  decay  of  age,  and  at  last 
it  includes  in  its  sweep  all  the  affections  that  can  soften,  as 
well  as  all  the  vices  that  can  degrade,  our  common  human- 
ity. The  Yahoos  are  a  study  of  mankind  quite  dehumanized 
and  imbruted;  the  Houyhnhnms  are  a  race  of  rational  ani- 
mals whose  stoical  superiority  is  purchased  at  the  cost  of  all 
natural  emotions.  There  is  no  other  satire  so  cruel  and 
hopeless.  And  its  effect  is  increased  by  Swift's  impassive 
manner.  There  is  nothing  feverish  and  nothing  exag- 
gerated in  his  story.  We  feel  that  underneath  the  surface 
there  burns  a  fierce,  despairing  indignation;  but  the  cool 
and  plausible  narrative  gives  no  sign. 

Swift  is  undeniably  our  greatest  satirist.  His  satire  is 
never  of  the  lighter  sort  that  exposes  to  good-humored 
laughter  our  vanity  and  follies;  severe  and  saturnine,  it  at- 
tacks only  what  seemed  to  Swift  some  essential  falsehood. 
His  motive  is  always  the  same, — he  will  tear  away  pretense 
and  convention  and  expose  the  truth.  We  may  grant  that 
the  limitations  of  Swift's  nature  made  his  definition  of  truth 
very  narrow.  Utterly  devoid  of  sentiment,  with  no  concep- 
tion of  the  ideal  element  in  life  and  no  sympathy  with  aspira- 
tion after  any  ends  not  measured  by  reason  and  the  senses, 
he  was  forced  to  interpret  truth  in  the  lowest  terms  of 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  225 

reality.  He  could  not  see  that  much  of  the  convention  of 
society  and  of  religion,  so  far  from  disguising  hypocrisy,  is 
an  honest  endeavor  to  express  not  our  attainments  but  our 
ideals.  Religious  enthusiasm  was  to  him  always  a  symptom 
of  imposture.  Truth  is  best  seen,  he  thought,  in  the  cool 
light  of  the  reason,  and  violent  zeal  for  it,  "has  a  hundred 
to  one  odds  to  be  either  petulancy,  ambition  or  pride."  ' 
But  these  very  limitations  of  sympathy  which  made  Swift's 
satire  often  unjust  add  to  its  awful  sincerity  and  vigor. 
There  is  no  department  of  our  nature  in  which  his  merciless 
eye  will  not  detect  some  smallness  or  falsehood. 

The  method  of  Swift's  satire  is  always  to  parody  the 
seeming  great  in  the  little.  Folly  and  vice  often  escape 
our  notice  when  our  vision  is  filled  with  the  splendid  figures 
of  power  or  the  long  spectacle  of  history;  but  we  see  them 
when  the  same  actions  are  parodied  on  the  satirist's  vulgar 
stage.  And  the  wider  the  contrast  in  circumstance  between 
the  imposing  falsehood  and  the  homely  verity,  the  more 
striking  the  satiric  effect.  This  is  the  reason  for  the  su- 
premacy of  Swift's  two  great  satires.  He  has  not  wasted 
himself  upon  personal  resentments,  nor  immortalized  fools, 
as  Pope  has  done  by  embalming  them  in  the  amber  of  his 
verse.  He  has  chosen  rather  as  the  object  of  one  of  his 
satires  the  corruptions  and  divisions  of  the  greatest  organi- 
zation on  earth;  and  he  has  shown  them  to  us  in  the  home- 
liest possible  story.  In  Gulliver  the  theme  of  his  satire  is 
wider  still;  nothing  less  than  the  pride,  folly,  and  weakness 
of  our  race.  And  the  narrative  that  conveys  it  is  an  old 
sailor's  yarn. 

There  is  a  kind  of  droll  literality  about  Swift's  humor- 
ous imagination.  He  usually  prefers  not  to  give  us  new  or 
strange  images  but  rather  to  exhibit  unexpected  force  in 
old  ones.  Thus  he  is  fond  of  bringing  out  the  vividness 
in  any  familiar  figure  by  gravely  taking  it  in  its  literal  mean- 
ing as  if  he  saw  no  other.  This  is  well  illustrated  in  that 
admirable  early  bit  of  foolery  in  which  Swift,  writing  over 
the  signature  of   Isaac   Bickerstaff,  had  predicted  that  the 

1  Thoughts  on  Religion,  Works,  VIII,   53. 


226  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

notorious  quack  and  almanac  maker,  Partridge,  would  in- 
fallibly die  of  a  fever  on  the  twenty-ninth  of  March  next, 
at  eleven  o'clock  at  night.  On  the  thirtieth  of  March 
Bickerstaff  issued  another  pamphlet  gravely  recounting  the 
death  of  Partridge  at  the  time  predicted;  and  when  next 
day  the  poor  charlatan  rushed  into  print  frantically  as- 
serting that  he  was  alive  still,  Bickerstaff  proceeded  to 
assure  him  that  he  must  be  mistaken  and  dead,  and  to  prove 
it  by  a  series  of  incontestable  arguments,  the  best  of  which 
was  that  above  a  thousand  gentlemen  having  bought  Part- 
ridge's almanac  this  year,  "at  every  line  they  read  they 
would  lift  up  their  eyes  and  cry  out  betwixt  rage  and 
laughter,  'they  were  sure  no  man  alive  ever  writ  such 
damned  stuff  as  this.'  Neither  did  I  ever  hear  that  opinion 
disputed;  so  that  Mr.  Partridge  lies  under  a  dilemma,  either 
of  disowning  his  almanac,  or  allowing  himself  to  be  no  man 
alive." 

When  Wood  threatened  that  if  the  Irish  people  refused 
his  coin  he  should  force  it  down  their  throats  by  law,  Swift 
set  Dublin  laughing  by  computing  in  all  seriousness  that 
it  was  doubtful  whether  there  were  throats  enough  in  Ire- 
land to  swallow  so  much  base  metal.  In  fact,  most  of  his 
narrative  satire  is  only  such  a  detailed  satiric  interpretation 
of  some  perfectly  familiar  metaphor.  This  is  evidently 
true  of  the  Battle  of  the  Books;  the  Modest  Proposal  is  a 
proposition,  carried  out  in  all  its  grim  circumstance,  that  the 
English  landlords  should  do  literally,  what  they  were  actu- 
ally doing  in  metaphor, — eat  up  the  Irish  poor;  while  Lilli- 
put  and  Brobdingnag  are  simply  a  visible  exhibition  of 
human  littleness.  And  Swift  has  astonishing  power  to 
realize  the  details  of  such  a  conception  so  as  to  enforce  a  be- 
lief in  his  narrative.  It  is  said  there  were  readers  who 
searched  the  atlas  to  determine  the  location  of  Laputa,  and 
one  person  stoutly  averred  Lemuel  Gulliver  to  be  his  neigh- 
bor. Nor  is  this  power  a  common  one.  Johnson,  who 
rather  begrudged  any  praise  to  Swift,  could  hardly  have 
made  a  more  inapt  remark  of  Gulliver  than  that  "when  we 
have  once  thought  of  big  men  and  little  men  it  is  easy  enough 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  227 

to  do  the  rest."  In  fact,  few  things  are  more  difficult  to 
do.  The  imagination  must  invent  an  infinitude  of  plausible 
circumstances,  all  in  strict  consistence  with  each  other  and 
with  the  central  supposition.  For  instance,  the  accuracy 
with  which  the  scale  of  size  is  maintained  in  Lilliput  has 
attracted  the  notice  of  one  of  the  most  acute  of  mathematical 
logicians.1  But  this  is  not  all.  Defoe,  whose  Robinson 
Crusoe  probably  gave  Swift  some  hints  for  Gulliver,  equals 
Swift  in  this  power  to  invent  credibilizing  details;  but 
Defoe  constantly  clogs  his  story  with  tedious  matters  that 
serve  no  other  purpose  than  to  increase  its  verisimilitude. 
The  incidents  in  Swift's  story,  on  the  contrary,  are  always 
interesting  in  themselves  and  always  advance  the  move- 
ment of  his  narrative.  And  withal  Swift  never  forgets  his 
allegorical  purpose:  every  incident  is  in  harmony  with  his 
mood,  and  all  the  more  important  ones  have  specific  satiric 
import.  It  is  this  union  of  the  most  sweeping  and  scathing 
satire  with  the  most  homely,  straight-forward,  unimpas- 
sioned  narrative  that  gives  to  Swift's  work  its  unique  quality, 
and  causes  the  masterpiece  of  the  greatest  English  cynic 
to  be  sometimes  thought  of  as  a  nursery  tale. 

The  temper  of  Gulliver  Swift  would  not  have  tried  to 
defend.  The  very  foundation  of  his  book,  he  said  to  Pope, 
was  misanthropy.  This,  he  felt  more  and  more,  was  the 
disease  of  his  soul.  His  only  excuse  was  he  could  not  help 
it.  Do  what  he  would,  the  black  picture  of  humanity  was 
constantly  before  his  eyes.  "Do  not  the  corruptions  and 
villainies  of  men  in  power  eat  your  flesh  and  exhaust  your 
spirits?"  he  once  said  to  Delany.  "Why,  no,  sir."  "No, 
sir!"  exclaimed  Swift  in  a  fury.  "\Yhv,how  can  you  help 
it,  how  can  you  avoid  it?"  Gulliver  is  the  record  of  this 
black  misanthropy  which,  beginning  to  make  itself  felt  in 
any  serious  form  only  after  his  exile  to  Dublin,  grew  steadily 
upon  him  till  it  deprived  him  of  his  sovereignty  of  reason  at 
the  last. 

Swift    had    been  -in    London    four    months    when    news 
came  of  the  illness  of  Stella  that  hurried  him  back  to  Ireland 
1  Dc  Morean. 


228  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

in  an  agony  of  apprehension.  Stella,  however,  rallied  for  a 
time,  and  he  returned  to  London  in  April  of  1727  to  com- 
plete during  the  summer  business  that  he  had  begun  there. 
But  he  had  little  heart  to  enjoy  the  companionship  of  his  old 
friends  as  he  had  done  the  year  previous.  His  own  malady 
tortured  him  as  never  before.  His  deafness  had  increased 
so  that  conversation  was  very  difficult.  His  memory  at 
times  seemed  to  be  slipping  away.  And  worst  of  all  was 
the  constant  apprehension  of  bad  news  from  the  one  friend 

On  whom  my  fears  and  hopes  depend, 
Absent  from  whom  all  climes  are  curst, 
With  whom  I'm  happy  in  the  worst.1 

In  September  the  fatal  tidings  came.  Stella  was  steadily 
sinking.  "My  God!"  he  writes,  "I  can't  come.  I  can't  see 
itl  Write  me  only  the  facts;  don't  write  me  circumstances, 
I  can't  bear  them.  What  am  I  to  do  in  this  world?  I  can 
hold  up  my  sorry  head  no  longer."  In  September  he  went 
back.  It  is  said  he  could  not  bear  the  formalities  of  leave- 
taking  with  the  friends  whom  he  knew  he  should  never  see 
again,  but  stole  away  from  Pope's  house  without  saying  any 
farewells.  It  was  three  months  after  he  reached  Dublin 
that  the  blow  fell.  Stella  died  on  January  28,  1728.  At 
eleven  o'clock  that  night  Swift  began,  and  two  nights  later, 
too  ill  to  rise  from  his  bed  but  removed  into  another 
chamber  where  he  might  not  catch  through  his  windows 
the  gleam  of  the  funeral  torches  that  lighted  her  to  burial 
in  the  cathedral  opposite,  he  continued  that  Character 
of  Mrs.  Johnson,  which  in  its  struggle  to  be  calm,  to 
tell  the  truth  as  in  the  presence  of  the  dead,  is  one  of  the 
most  pathetic  things  in  the  language.  There  is  no  word  of 
hysterical  sorrow  in  it,  but  a  grief  too  deep  for  tears. 

XII 

The  rest  of  Swift's  life  is  soon  told.     With  Gulliver 
his  literary  work  was  practically  finished.     He  wrote  a  few 

1  From  some  verses  written  in  a  private  journal  by  Swift  while  waiting 
at  Holyhead  for  the  Irish  packet.  They  were  first  printed  by  Mr.  Craik, 
Suift,  Appendix  IX. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  229 

more  tracts  on  Irish  matters,  urging  on  the  Irish  people,  as 
he  had  always  done,  habits  of  self-help,  and  a  temper  of 
self-assertion.  These  later  pamphlets  show  a  most  poignant 
sense  of  the  misery  of  the  great  mass  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  peasantry.  The  most  famous  of  them,  A  Modest 
Proposal,  in  which  he  suggests  that  the  infant  children  of 
the  peasantry  be  used  as  food,  so  far  from  being  as  it  is 
often  regarded,  a  piece  of  cold-blooded  brutality,  is  a  cry 
of  despairing  pity  and  anger,  wrung  from  Swift  at  a  time 
when  all  over  Ireland  the  wretched  cotters  were  dying  of 
famine  by  hundreds  and  left  unburied  before  their  own 
doors,  while  absentee  landlords  were  spending  their  rents 
in  England.  Swift  himself  was  still  faithful  to  his  clerical 
duties  in  these  latest  years,  and  a  score  of  stories  attest  his 
personal  benevolence,  his  rough  but  kindly  helpfulness. 
He  sadly  owned  that  it  was  the  necessity  of  his  nature  "to 
hate  and  detest  that  animal  called  man";  but  he  had  always 
pity  and  aid  for  individual  members  of  the  species.  His 
services  for  Irish  liberty  had  won  him  the  hearts  of  all  the 
humble  folk  in  Ireland,  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike.  He 
gave  a  woman  a  guinea,  one  day,  to  buy  a  gown,  stipulating 
only  that  it  should  be  of  Irish  stuff;  she  came  back  shortly 
with  a  full  set  of  his  books,  protesting,  "Faith,  your  rever- 
ence, they're  the  best  Irish  stuff  I  know."  Over  the  mob  of 
Dublin,  he  was,  says  Orrery,  "the  most  absolute  monarch 
that  ever  ruled  men."  And  he  used  his  mastery  well.  He 
was  enraged  at  Irish  servility,  but  he  would  not  flatter 
Irish  grandiloquence  or  countenance  Irish  lawlessness. 
When  Archbishop  Boulter,  the  rancorous  primate  who  gov- 
erned the  Irish  church  on  the  narrowest  Whig  principles, 
once  complained  that  Swift  fostered  disaffection  in  the 
Dublin  populace,  Swift  retorted,  "if  I  had  lifted  my  hand, 
they  would  have  torn  you  in  a  thousand  pieces." 

But  nothing  could  much  relieve  the  deepening  gloom 
that  was  settling  about  Swift's  life.  The  death  of  Stella 
left  him  alone.  He  had  gathered  about  him  a  small  circle 
of  acquaintance,  but  no  friends  to  take  the  place  of  the 
old  ones.     His  most  intimate  companions  after   1730  were 


230  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Dr.  Delany,  a  fellow  of  Trinity,  now  remembered  chiefly  as 
lucky  enough  to  marry  a  bright  woman, — also  of  Swift's 
circle, — who  wrote  a  charming  diary;  and  one  Thomas 
Sheridan,  a  careless,  happy-go-lucky  Irish  schoolmaster, 
who  was  blest  with  good  wits  but  with  no  sense  to  use 
them.  Swift  found  much  diversion  in  Sheridan's  rough- 
and-ready  Irish  wit :  they  wrote  each  other  doggerel  verse, 
badgered  each  other  in  execrable  puns,  and  between  them 
both  wrote  nonsense  enough  to  fill  a  good-sized  volume. 
Swift  tried  also  to  knock  a  little  hard  sense  into  the  rather 
roomy  head  of  his  friend;  but  he  never  had  much  success 
in  that  attempt.  He  still  kept  up  his  correspondence  with 
the  old  London  circle,  but  there  is  in  his  letters  the  melan- 
choly assurance  of  final  separation.  And  as  one  after  an- 
other they  began  to  drop  away  his  own  hopeless  isolation 
became  intolerable.  "Within  the  past  twenty  years,"  he 
wrote  Pope  in  1736,  "I  have  lost  twenty-seven  great  men  of 
art  and  learning.  I  have  nobody  left  but  you-now."  In 
that  year  his  illness  *  began  to  assume  the  form  that  he 
had  so  long  dreaded ;  his  mental  powers  began  to  fail  rapidly. 
This  decline  continued,  accompanied  by  periods  of  intense 
physical  agony  until  the  summer  of  1742;  then,  after  some 
weeks  of  most  acute  suffering,  he  sank  into  a- state  of  torpor 
that  lasted  until  the  end.     He  died  October  19,  1745. 


XIII 

Swift  owes  his  eminence  not  to  a  facile  and  cultivated 
genius  like  Addison's,  or  to  a  carefully  developed  literary 
art  like  Pope's.  He  was  not  a  man  of  large  attainments 
or  of  great  breadth  of  mind.  He  had  not  the  charm  of 
urbane  manners;  he  was  indifferent  to  all  the  studied  niceties 
of  literature.  It  was  his  tremendous  force  of  character  that 
lifted  him  above  his  contemporaries.  No  other  English- 
man of  that  half  century  has  impressed  his  personality  so 
deeply  upon  our  imagination.     All  the  men  of  his  time  seem 

xThe  physicians  in  recent  times  pronounce  Swift's  malady  to  be  labyrin- 
thine vertigo  or  Meniere's  disease. 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  231 

pale  and  tame  beside  his  stern,  proud  figure.  The  few  who 
loved  him  and  the  many  who  feared  him,  alike  bowed  before 
that  imperious  personality.  Even  in  the  little  circle  of  his 
great  friends  in  London  there  was  always  some  tacit  recog- 
nition of  his  dominance.  Of  all  that  circle  it  was  Arbuthnot 
who  knew  him  best  and  loved  him  most;  yet  in  Arbuthnot's 
delightful  letters  to  Swift  there  is  a  tone  of  deference  not 
heard  in  his  other  correspondence.  "He  was  always 
alone,"  says  Thackeray. 

Force  of  character  like  this  always  implies  positiveness 
of  conviction  united  with  energy  of  will.  Swift's  range  of 
intellectual  interests  was  not  very  wide,  but  within  its  limits 
his  judgments  were  inflexible.  He  was  not  one  of  those 
easy  men  who  are  ready  to  admit  that  much  may  be  said  on 
both  sides.  With  reference  to  most  matters  on  which  it 
seemed  to  him  worth  while  to  think  at  all,  he  had  made  up 
his  mind;  and  he  had  no  patience  with  the  hesitating  temper 
that  takes  credit  to  itself  for  liberality  and  openness  of  view. 
He  had,  in  its  most  dogmatic  form,  the  eighteenth  century 
confidence  in  the  infallibility  of  reason.  He  held  that  in  all 
important  matters  a  needful  amount  of  truth  is  always  ac- 
cessible to  honest  search;  doubt  or  dispute  about  it,  there- 
fore, implied  either  feebleness  of  mind,  which  roused  his 
contempt,  or  wilful  blindness,  which  roused  his  anger.  In 
the  last  book  of  Gulliver  the  gray  Houyhnhnm  finds  it  very 
difficult  to  understand  what  men  can  mean  by  that  word 
"opinion,"  or  how  any  point  can  be  disputable.  For  among 
the  noble  Houyhnhnms,  says  Gulliver,  reason  is  not  "a  point 
problematical,  as  with  us,  where  men  can  argue  with  plausi- 
bility on  both  sides  of  the  question;  but  strikes  you  with 
immediate  conviction  as  it  must  needs  do  where  it  is  not 
mingled,  obscured,  or  discolored,  by  passion  and  interest." 
When  such  positiveness  of  conviction  is  backed  by  corre- 
sponding energy  of  will,  the  man  may  be  domineering  and 
arrogant,  but  he  is  irresistible.  Constrained  by  the  very 
honesty  of  his  convictions  to  tolerate  no  difference  of  opinion 
and  to  allow  no  compromise,  he  imputes  all  intelligent  op- 
position to  obstinacy  and  bears  it  down  by  sheer  personal 


232  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

force.  This,  it  may  be  admitted,  was  Swift's  method. 
Among  friends  of  similar  views  to  his  own  he  was  a  most 
delightful  companion,  with  a  humor  and  imagination  quite 
unmatched  in  his  age.  Nor  did  he  invite  controversy;  on 
the  contrary,  he  always  deprecated  the  intrusion  into  society 
of  those  political  topics  that  separated  old  friends,  and  his 
long  friendship  with  Addison  is  proof  of  his  willingness  to 
exclude  all  cause  for  difference  from  their  acquaintance. 
Controversy  once  begun,  though,  he  gave  his  adversary  no 
alternative  but  to  succumb  or  retire.  He  was  impatient  of 
contradiction  even  from  his  friends;  and  showed  a  lack  of 
intellectual  sympathy  which  was  a  part  of  the  price  of  his 
personal  power. 

It  was  this  intense  personality  that  made  Swift's  sense  of 
failure  so  tragic.  For  natures  like  his  do  not  brook  defeat. 
They  will  not  learn  to  adapt  themselves  and  make  the  best 
of  things.  They  cannot  believe  themselves  meant  for  fail- 
ure. And  in  fact  they  do  not  often  fail.  To  change  Portius' 
old  proverb  a  little,  they  may  not  deserve  success  but  they 
will  command  it.  Yet  adverse  circumstances  may  sometimes 
thwart  powers  that  no  rival  could  surpass  and  no  enemy 
withstand.  That  seemed  Swift's  fate.  He  was  hampered 
by  poverty  and  isolation  in  his  early  life;  he  was  connected 
during  his  best  years  with  a  party  that  was  successful  only 
for  a  few  months  and  never  represented  a  majority  that  was 
permanent  or  ideas  that  were  progressive;  he  was  exiled 
just  at  his  meridian  to  a  country  he  hated,  and  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  people  whom  he  could  not  help  despising  even 
while  he  served  them.  Thus  he  was  condemned  all  his  days 
to  chafe  under  the  conviction  of  great  possibilities  he  might 
never  realize.  Only  once  did  he  find  a  scene  in  which  he 
could  give  his  powers  full  swing;  and  then  only  long  enough 
to  make  more  bitter  the  enforced  inactivity  or  uncongenial 
effort  to  which  he  was  remanded  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
Moreover  a  merciless  disease  was  creeping  surely  upon  him, 
and  he  knew  it.  "I  shall  be  like  that  tree,"  said  he  to  a 
friend  once,  pointing  to  a  blasted  elm.  "I  shall  die  at  the 
top."     Add  to  adverse  fortune  the  agonizing  prescience  of 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  233 

this  doom, — for  Scott  assigned  this  remark  to  the  year  1717, 
— and  we  shall  not  wonder  that  this  eager  but  baffled  spirit 
consumed  itself  in  hopeless  anger  till  it  passed  to  where — in 
the  words  he  wrote  for  his  own  epitaph — Sava  indignatio 
cor  ulterius  lacerare  nequit. 

If  the  account  of  Swift's  career  given  in  the  foregoing 
pages  be  correct,  it  is  evident  that  he  was  not  guilty  of  some 
of  the  charges  that  have  been  brought  against  him.  He  was 
no  time-server  or  turn-coat  in  politics.  He  was  not  heartless 
or  fickle  in  his  relations  with  those  two  women  whose  story 
is  so  strangely  twined  with  his.  Still  less  was  he  a  hypocrite. 
No  more  sincere  man  ever  lived.  In  fact,  his  consuming 
hatred  of  shams  was  the  motive  of  most  of  his  work.  He 
was  what  Bolingbroke  well  called  "a  hypocrite  reversed" 
and  had  a  morbid  dread  of  seeming  what  he  was  not.  It 
was  this  that  caused  him  sometimes  to  belie  in  outward 
seeming  his  own  best  qualities,  and  occasioned  grave  mis- 
understanding of  his  character.  Thus  he  certainly  was  not  a 
cold-blooded  cynic;  but  he  sometimes  seemed  one.  Friend- 
ship never  lay  deeper  in  any  man's  heart  than  in  his,  or  took 
stronger  hold  on  any  life.  He  loved  his  friends  sincerely, 
and  they  loved  him, — the  wisest  and  best  of  them  loved  him 
most.  Their  sorrows  and  bereavements  smote  him  to  the 
heart.  Some  of  his  letters  of  sympathy  and  condolence — 
to  Harley,  to  Pope,  to  Arbuthnot,  to  Lady  Betty  Germaine 
— are  among  the  noblest  and  most  moving  ever  penned. 
But,  as  is  often  the  case  with  such  rugged  natures,  he  had  a 
distrust  of  all  emotion  as  a  sign  of  weakness;  and  was  so  in- 
tolerant of  sentimentality  that  he  often  seemed  devoid  of 
sentiment.  Not  only  was  he  too  bluntly  honest  to  express 
any  emotion  that  he  did  not  feel,  but  he  pushed  his  dread  of 
dissimulation  so  far  that  he  refused  to  adopt  the  conven- 
tionalities of  sympathy,  and  often  gave  offense  by  what 
seemed  brutal  frankness  or  indifference.  He  refuses  to  join 
with  the  ministers  in  their  expressions  of  pity  and  humanity 
for  their  old  enemy,  Godolphin,  simply  because  "he  is  dead 
and  can  do  them  no  hurt."  He  bluntly  expresses  his  im- 
patience at  Mrs.  Masham's  anxiety  over  her  sick  child  at  a 


234  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

moment  when  great  affairs  demand  her  attention.  Some- 
times, indeed,  he  cynically  depreciates  our  most  instinctive 
affections  on  the  ground  that  they  warp  our  judgment  and 
are  inconsistent  with  rational  attachment.  Such  passages 
really  indicate,  not  that  he  was  himself  incapable  of  these 
affections,  but  on  the  contrary,  that  he  felt  himself  liable  to 
be  softened  or  misled  by  their  excess.  Moreover,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  his  own  emotions,  though  they  had  great 
depth  and  intensity,  were  singularly  deficient  in  delicacy.  In 
his  relations  with  other  people  he  had  almost  none  of  that 
power  to  appreciate  finer  shades  of  feeling  upon  which  quick- 
ness of  sympathy  depends.  His  nature  was  too  robust  and 
strenuous  to  admit  any  possibilities  of  grace  or  refinement; 
and  much  attention  to  the  amenities  of  life  seemed  to  him 
inconsistent  with  sincerity  and  earnestness. 

Much  of  Swift's  seeming  irreverence  may  be  explained  in 
a  similar  way.  A  careful  reading  of  his  letters  and  works 
will  convince  any  candid  person  that  he  was  at  heart  a 
reverent  man.  In  the  presence  of  the  great  mysteries  of  re- 
ligion he  bows  with  silent  awe.  But  if  he  had  reverence  for 
truth,  he  never  had  any  sympathetic  respect  for  what  he 
thought  surely  false,  simply  because  other  people  thought  it 
true.  Such  a  compliance  seemed  to  him  a  kind  of  treachery 
to  his  own  convictions.  Lacking,  as  has  been  said,  in  in- 
tellectual sympathy  and  in  delicate  consideration  for  the 
feelings  of  others,  he  often,  by  his  very  sincerity,  seemed  to 
pass  into  almost  brutal  irreverence,  and  gave  offense  which 
he  himself  could  never  understand.  The  Tale  of  a  Tub,  for 
instance,  has  shocked  many  people  by  its  ruthless  satire  upon 
doctrines  and  usages  which  they  hold  sacred,  or  at  all  events 
regard  as  invested  with  sacred  associations  even  if  they  do 
not  accept  them.  But  to  Swift  these  things  were  simply  not 
true.  They  were  part  of  that  mass  of  delusion  which  arro- 
gance had  foisted  upon  superstition;  they  belonged  to  the 
army  of  shams  against  which  he  felt  consuming  indignation. 
This  being  so,  he  never  could  understand  why  any  one  who 
disbelieved  them  should  object  to  ridiculing  them.  As  to  his 
own  religious  attitude,  his  dread  of  anything  like  pretense 


JONATHAN  SWIFT  235 

exaggerated  the  healthy  reserve  that  most  men  feel  in  the 
expression  of  religious  sentiments  into  a  morbid  reticence 
and  concealment.  He  followed  almost  too  literally  the 
Scriptural  exhortation  to  secrecy  both  in  his  charities  and  in 
his  devotions.  Yet  surely  no  man  has  a  right  to  impugn  his 
sincerity.  He  believed  his  creed.  He  accepted  its  mysteries, 
and  had  nothing  but  contempt  for  those  flippant  coffee- 
house skeptics  who  glibly  professed  to  believe  nothing  they 
could  not  understand.  Whether  he  knew  much  of  the  in- 
spiration and  the  consolations  of  Christianity  may  perhaps 
admit  of  a  mournful  doubt.  His  belief  hardly  rose  into 
that  faith  which  can  be  hopeful  in  the  presence  of  the  uni- 
versal spectacle  of  folly  and  sin.  The  grim  picture  of  the 
world's  wrong  was  always  before  his  eyes :  that,  in  spite  of  it, 
he  held  any  silent  belief  is  surely  proof,  not  of  hypocrisy,  but 
of  profound  intellectual  conviction. 

But  it  is  Swift's  misanthropy  that  has  done  most  to  turn 
the  verdict  of  posterity  against  him.  Men  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  think  well  of  him;  for  he  didn't  think  well  of  men. 
This  misanthropy  did  not  show  itself  in  any  repellent  form 
until  after  the  great  disappointment  of  his  exile  to  Ireland 
in  1 7  14.  Yet  the  seeds  of  it  were  in  his  nature.  No  man 
was  ever  so  endowed  with  the  satiric  gift  to  detect  unveraci- 
ties,  to  pierce  through  all  conventions,  to  see  how  little  sub- 
stance is  concealed  by  the  big  shows  of  life.  And  this  gift  is 
always  fatal  to  its  possessor  unless  it  be  balanced  by  a  power 
to  see  also  the  manifold  good  of  life  and  tempered  by  that 
charity  which  believeth  and  hopeth.  He  w^ho  does  not  love 
men  will  soon  lose  faith  in  them;  then,  the  keener  his  vision, 
the  sterner  his  sense  of  right,  the  more  intense  will  be  his 
indignation  against  his  kind.  And  indignation,  even  right- 
eous indignation,  is  not  a  mood  in  which  any  man  may  live 
happily  or  beneficently.  Now  in  those  redeeming  graces 
that  sweeten  the  satiric  temper,  Swift  was  by  nature  deficient. 
His  affections,  as  we  have  seen,  were  deep — perhaps  all 
the  deeper  and  more  impetuous  because  confined  to  so  nar- 
row a  channel ;  but  he  never  had  much  genial  humanity.  The 
broad  injunction  of  the  second  commandment  he   avowed 


236  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

himself  unable  to  keep.  This  unfortunate  temper  would 
probably,  in  any  case,  have  grown  more  bitter  with  advanc- 
ing years ;  age  dispels  some  generous  illusions  even  for  the 
most  charitable  man.  But  in  Swift  it  was  frightfully  ex- 
aggerated by  disappointment  and  disease.  In  his  later  years 
he  too  often  lost  all  power  of  discrimination  in  his  all- 
embracing  hatred  of  the  race;  and  his  anger  at  our  sins  was 
swallowed  up  in  his  contempt  for  our  weakness. 

But  here  again  let  us  at  least  give  Swift  credit  for 
sincerity.  He  was  none  of  your  easy  gentlemen,  who  preach 
vanitas  vanitatum  in  a  graceful  and  superior  manner.  He 
never  heightened  his  indignation  for  declamatory  effect, — as 
Carlyle  did, — or  made  literary  capital  of  his  misanthropy. 
The  black  side  of  life  gradually  filled  all  his  vision;  he  did 
not  love  it,  but  he  could  not  thrust  it  away.  This  suggests 
the  true  explanation  for  the  passages  of  extreme  physical 
grossness  that  sometimes  offend  us  in  his  writing.  They  are 
due  in  part,  no  doubt,  to  his  lack  of  delicacy  and  his  bold 
defiance  of  all  conventions.  Yet  he  was  himself  a  scrupu- 
lously clean  man  in  his  habits  and  conversation, — far  more 
so  than  Pope, — and  rebuked  any  violations  of  decency  by 
others  with  unsparing  severity.  The  truth  seems  to  be,  it 
was  a  mark  of  the  morbid  perversity  of  his  temper  that 
whatsoever  was  most  displeasing  to  him  forced  itself  most 
persistently  into  his  thought.  He  dwells  upon  filth  not  be- 
cause he  loves  it,  but  because  he  hates  it.  He  disgusts  us 
by  the  expression  of  his  own  disgust.  This  tendency  in- 
creased in  his  later  years,  and  Delany  is  doubtless  right  in 
taking  it  as  a  symptom  of  mental  unsoundness.  In  truth  the 
last  word  with  reference  to  Swift  should  always  be  that 
whatever  in  his  character  most  needs  excuse  was  due  in  part 
to  incurable  physical  disease — in  how  large  part,  only  He 
can  tell  who  so  strangely  joins  these  minds  and  bodies  of 
ours,  and  to  whom  alone  belongeth  judgment. 


ROBERT  BURNS 

IT  is  hard  to  fix  on  any  date  or  name  that  may  mark  with 
accuracy  the  beginning  of  a  new  literary  era;  changes  in 
literary  manner  are  gradual,  and  you  may  find  in  Gold- 
smith, or  still  more  in  Cowper,  notes  of  the  new  music  and 
some  breath  of  the  new  inspiration.  But  it  seems  to  me  that 
the  new  poetry  began  in  a  harvest-field  of  Scotland,  on  the 
skirts  of  the  pleasant  valley  of  the  Ayr,  in  the  autumn  of 
1773.  In  accordance  with  the  old  Scottish  fashion  each  man 
and  boy  of  the  reapers  has  his  partner  among  the  women 
and  girls  of  the  harvest  folk.  Among  all  the  lassies  none 
sings  more  sweetly  than  trim  little  Nellie  Kilpatrick,  the 
daughter  of  the  blacksmith  at  Ayr.  She  is  but  fourteen 
and  her  partner  not  quite  a  year  older,  proud  that  this  year 
'first  among  the  yellow  corn,  a  man  he  reckoned  is.'  Here, 
by  your  leave,  Messrs.  Pope  and  Gay  and  Shenstone,  here  is 
a  bit  of  genuine  pastoral.  Nellie  sings  divinely — albeit 
mostly  to  one  tune;  and  the  words  are  wretched  doggerel 
some  country  laird  has  written  to  his  lady.  But  the  notes 
of  her  song,  as  they  two  loiter  behind  the  rest  when  they 
fare  home  from  the  harvest-field  in  the  twilight,  have 
touched  in  the  heart  of  the  boy  that  chord  which  was  hardly 
ever  to  be  still  again  so  long  as  he  lived. 

I  see  her  yet,  the  sonsie  quean 
That  lighted  up  my  jingle, 
Her  witching  smile,  her  paulcy  een, 
That  gart  my  heart-strings  tingle! 
I,  fired  inspired, 

At  ev'ry  kindling  keek, 
But,  bashing  and  dashing, 
I   feared  ay  to  speak. 

But  why  not  tell  it  in  a  song,  fitted  to  the  air  she  her- 
self was  so  often  singing.  He  could  at  least  write  as  good 
a  one  as  the  country  laird.    And  thus  love  awoke  the  music: 

237 


238  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

O,  once  I  lov'd  a  bonie  lass, 

Ay,  and  I  love  her  still! 
And  whilst  that  virtue  warms  my  breast 

I'll  love  my  handsome  Nell. 

As  bonie  lasses  I  hae  seen, 

And  monie  full  as  braw, 
But  for  a  modest  gracefu'  mien 

The  like  I  never  saw. 

•  •••••# 

She  dresses  aye  sae  clean  and  neat, 

Both  decent  and  genteel; 
And  then  there's  something  in  her  gait 

Gars  onie  dress  look  weel. 

A  gaudy  dress  and  gentle  air 

May  slightly  touch  the  heart; 
But  it's  innocence  and  modesty 

That  polishes  the  dart. 

'Tis  this  in  Nelly  pleases  me, 

'Tis  this  enchants  my  soul; 
For  absolutely  in  my  breast 

She  reigns  without  controul. 

This,  as  he  used  always  after  to  say,  was  Robert  Burns' 
first  love  and  first  song.  I  think  we  may  call  it  the  beginning 
of  our  new  poetry.  But  we  shall  mistake  if  we  think  this 
bit  of  pretty  pastoral  came  out  of  a  sunny  and  quiet  life. 
Assuredly  the  life  of  this  man,  Robert  Burns,  was  a  tragedy 
if  any  ever  was,  and  the  tragedy  had  already  begun.  His 
father  clearly  enough  was  a  man  of  much  native  judgment 
and  penetration,  a  stern,  yet  kindly,  observant,  patient, 
God-fearing  man.  But  he  wore  his  life  slowly  out  in  the 
silent  struggle  to  wring  from  seven  poor  acres  barely  bread 
enough  to  keep  his  family  from  starvation — bread  literally, 
"for  years  butcher's  meat  was  unknown  in  our  house,"  says 
one  of  the  brothers. 

At  thirteen  Robert  was  threshing  all  day  with  the  men. 
At  sixteen  his  shoulders  were  rounded;  he  went  to  bed  every 
night  with  dull  headache,  with  frequent  faintness,  and  a 
feeling  of  suffocation.     And  the  worst  was,  all  would  not 


ROBERT  BURNS  239 

suffice.  Every  year  saw  the  old  father  steadily  weakening, 
and  the  whole  family,  with  a  proud  Scottish  dread  of  beg- 
gary, drawing  nearer  the  desperate  verge  of  want.  Robert 
was  naturally  gay  and  buoyant,  with  an  immense  fund  of 
animal  spirits;  but  his  life  already  told  upon  him.  He  was 
moody  and  often  depressed  as  no  boy  of  fifteen  ought  ever 
to  be.  Poverty  when  it  pinches  but  moderately  and  only 
seems  to  brace  the  young  man's  power  to  more  resolute 
effort,  is  often  a  great  blessing;  but  poverty  like  that  of 
Robert  Burns  is  a  curse  which  has  slight  mitigations.  For 
it  isn't  merely  physical  privations  and  hardship  that  such 
poverty  brings.  This  young  man  has  intellectual  cravings; 
but  there  are  no  libraries  and  universities  for  him.  This 
young  Robert  Burns  has  a  vivid  imagination,  a  prompt  un- 
erring taste;  but  the  great  world  of  literature  is  all  but 
closed  to  him.  He  reads  over  the  few  books  he  can  find 
at  home;  besides  the  big  ha'  Bible,  there  was  a  Spectator,  a 
Pope,  a  Locke  On  the  Human  Understanding,  and  The 
Whole  Duty  of  Man;  in  none  of  which  save  the  Bible  would 
he  be  likely  to  find  much.  He  borrows  books  when  he  can, 
gets  a  look  into  Shakespeare,  and  best  of  all  finds  a  collection 
of  old  Scots  songs,  which  he  learns  by  heart.  But  this  is 
about  all  the  young  poet  can  get  before  he  is  eighteen. 

Then,  too,  this  young  man  has  native  social  gifts  of  the 
rarest  sort;  wit,  exuberant  spirits,  keen  penetration,  versa- 
tility, tact,  and  that  rare  power  of  ardent,  fascinating  con- 
verse which  was  afterward  to  astonish  for  a  little  time  the 
^reat  people  of  Edinburgh.  "Why,  sir,  his  conversation  set 
me  completely  off  my  feet,"  said  the  lively  Duchess  of 
Gordon,  you  remember.  Such  a  young  fellow  must  have 
vague,  half-conscious,  social  longings  and  aspirations:  he 
needs  the  stimulating  and  refining  companionship  of  those 
who  can  appreciate  and  exercise  his  powers.  But  what  so- 
ciety can  young  Robert  Burns  have?  His  brilliant  con- 
versation is  squandered  upon  those  who  toil  with  him  in  the 
peat-bog  or  at  the  plow-tail.  His  tender  heart  and  kindling 
fancy  made  him,  in  turn,  the  devotee  of  almost  every  comely 
girl  in  the  parish;  but  it  is  doubtful  whether  in  all  the  little 


24o  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

circle  of  those  to  whom  he  dared  lift  his  thought  there  was 
one  who  could  write  her  name.  You  recall  the  arch  humor 
and  independence  of  the  verses  he  wrote  on  Miss  Jennie 
Ronalds  who  lived  in  the  big  house,  and  whose  father  was 
supposed  to  have  something  handsome  to  give  away  with  his 
girl  when  the  fit  suitor  should  come : 

To  proper  young  men,  he'll  clink  in  the  hand, 
Gowd  guineas  a  hunder  or  two,  man. 

•  ••••••• 

I  lo'e  her  mysel,  but  darena  weel  tell, 

My  poverty  keeps  me  in  awe,  man ; 
For  making  o'  rhymes,  and  working  at  times, 

Does  little  or  naething  at  a',  man. 

Yet  I  wadna  choose  to  let  her  refuse, 
Nor  hae  't  in  her  power  to  say  na,  man : 

For  though  I  be  poor,  unnoticed,  obscure, 
My  stomach's  as  proud  as  them  a',  man. 

•  •*••••• 

I  never  was  canny  for  hoarding  o'  money, 

Or  claughtin't  together  at  a',  man ; 
I've  little  to  spend  and  naething  to  lend, 

But  devil  a  shilling  I  awe,  man. 

It  is  dangerous  thus  to  confine  a  young  man's  regard  to 
those  who  are  so  much  his  inferiors,  and  to  shut  up  too 
straitly  such  powers  and  such  desires.  If  they  cannot  find 
outlet  in  one  way,  they  will  in  another.  Before  he  is  twenty 
young  Burns  is  already  beginning  to  show  a  restless  discon- 
tent with  his  lot,  and  breaks  out  now  and  then  in  moody 
defiance  of  those  proprieties  upon  which  the  inequality  of 
society  seems  to  depend. 

Yet  up  to  the  age  of  twenty-three  his  life,  if  cramped 
and  meager,  is  yet  a  pure  and  manly  one.  He  is  under  his 
father's  roof,  where  the  light  of  a  holy  piety  shines,  calm 
and  steady.  And  with  all  the  hardships  of  his  lot,  there 
are  compensations:  he  has  the  light  spirits,  the  quenchless 
hope  of  youth,  self-respect  and  independence,  sympathies 
quick  and  unsullied,  and  an  imagination  that  can  shed  a 
freshening  light  over  all  the  homely  routine  of  his  life. 


ROBERT  BURNS  241 

In  days  when  daisies  deck  the  ground, 

And  blackbirds  whistle  clear, 
With  honest  joy  our  hearts  will  bound, 
To  see  the  coming  year: 

On  braes  when  we  please  then, 
We'll  sit  an'  sowth  a  tune; 
Syne  rhyme  till  't  we'll  time  till't, 
An'  sing  't  when  we  hae  done. 

It's  no  in  titles  nor  in  rank: 

It's  no  in  wealth  like  Lon'on  Bank, 

To  purchase  peace  and  rest, 
It's  no  in  makin  muckle,  mair; 
It's  no  in  books,  it's  no  in  lear, 

To  make  us  truly  blest: 
If  happiness  hae  not  her  seat 

An'  centre  in  the  breast, 
We  may  be  wise,  or  rich,  or  great, 
But  never  can  be  blest! 

Nae  treasures  nor  pleasures 

Could  make  us  happy  lang; 
The  heart  ay's  the  part  ay 

That  makes  us  right  or  wrang. 

Good  philosophy  as  well  as  good  poetry  that,  and  Burns 
doubtless  had  occasion  in  those  early  years  to  put  it  often 
to  the  test. 

But  it  is  from  his  twenty-third  year  that  I  should  date  a 
new  chapter  in  the  history  of  Burns.  Early  in  that  year, 
there  happened  to  Burns  that  event  which  has  made  an  era  in 
the  life  of  many  a  young  fellow — a  certain  young  lady  said 
No.  The  rather  unpoetic  name  which  Burns  wished  this 
young  lady  to  change  seems  to  have  been  Begbie.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  a  country  farmer,  and  out  at  service;  but 
from  what  is  known  of  her,  one  judges  her  to  have  been 
a  girl  of  tact  and  art,  and  withal  fairly  well  educated. 
Burns'  letters  to  Miss  Elison  Begbie  are  manly  and  noble, — 
much  better  love-letters,  I  am  bound  to  say,  than  he  ever 
wrote  again.  And  it  was  to  her  that  he  wrote  a  series  of 
his  best  love  lyrics.  All  those  familiar  with  Scottish  song 
will  recall  that  charming  melody  My  Nannie  0,  with  the 
words  which  Burns  fitted  to  it;  and  some  students  of  Burns 


242  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

think  that  Elison  Begbie  is  the  object  of  that  best  of  all  his 
early  love  song,  Mary  Morison. 

O  Mary,  at  thy  window  be! 

It  is  the  wish'd,  the  trysted  hour. 
Those  smiles  and  glances  let  me  see, 

That  make  the  miser's  treasure  poor. 
How  blythely  wad  I  bide  the  stoure, 

A  weary  slave  frae  sun  to  sun, 
Could  I  the  rich  reward  secure — 

The  lovely  Mary  Morison! 

But  Mary  Morison  was  thrifty  as  well  as  bonny,  and  Rab 
Burns  was  very  poor  and  not  like  to  be  richer :  and  so  she 
said  No.  I  think  it  a  pity.  It  is  idle,  doubtless,  to  con- 
jecture what  might  have  been, — yet  it  seems  to  me  here  was 
a  woman  not  too  far  above  him  in  social  rank  who  might, 
nevertheless,  have  proved  a  companion  for  Burns,  the  poet, 
as  well  as  Burns,  the  peasant.  Sure  I  am  he  never  found 
such  an  one  again. 

But  worse  things  befell  Burns  in  this  year.  Near  the 
close  of  it,  soon  after  he  had  received  his  last  letter  from 
Elison  Begbie,  he  went  away  to  the  neighboring  sea-coast 
town  of  Irvine  to  learn  the  manufacture  of  flax,  hoping 
thereby  to  eke  out  a  little  the  slender  income  of  the  family. 
He  carried  away  with  him  a  heart  smarting  some,  it  may  be, 
from  Mary  Morison's  refusal,  and  certainly  embittered  and 
reckless  at  the  vexations  of  his  lot.  And  he  carried  it  to  a 
bad  place.  Irvine  was  a  vile  little  town ;  and  the  companions 
Burns  met  there — sailors  and  smugglers — louder  and  wilder 
than  any  he  had  before  consorted  with.  One  among  them, 
especially,  who  had  knocked  about  the  world  a  good  deal 
and  whose  gay  wit  and  adventurous  temper  had  a  charm 
for  Burns,  taught  the  young  Ayrshire  peasant  that  devil's 
own  lie,  that  purity  is  a  childish  virtue,  and  that  a  certain 
modicum  of  vice  is  a  manly  accomplishment  for  any  young 
fellow.  "His  friendship  did  me  much  harm,"  said  Burns 
a  few  years  later.  In  sad  truth  it  did — and  the  fruits  of  it 
were  too  soon  evident.  Burns  came  home  from  Irvine  to 
find  his  father,  worn  out  at  last,  on  his  death-bed.     "I'm 


ROBERT  BURNS  243 

troubled,"  said  the  dying  old  man,  "I'm  troubled  for  one  o' 
my  boys."  "O,  father,  is  it  me  ye  mean?"  said  Robert, 
bursting  into  tears.  "Aye,  Rab,  it  is,"  the  old  father  could 
only  falter.  His  forebodings  were  but  too  true,  and  before 
the  father  had  been  in  his  grave  a  twelvemonth,  his  son 
Robert,  his  good  name  smirched,  and — what  was  worse — 
with  a  blot  on  the  native  purity  and  delicacy  of  his  feelings, 
was  writing  for  the  first  time  verses  such  as  he  should  never 
have  written,  verses  in  which  he  vainly  strives  to  glory  in 
his  shame  and  to  drown  in  bravado  the  monitions  of  a 
wounded  conscience. 

We  cannot  forget,  indeed,  that  the  short  life  of  this  man 
was  darkened  by  sins  as  well  as  by  sorrows;  nor  need  we  try 
to  forget.  It  is  no  real  charity  to  overlook  the  dark  facts  in 
any  man's  career.  Let  us  know  the  truth.  But  we  ought  to 
remember  that  in  the  case  of  any  poet,  certainly  any  poet  so 
frank  and  impulsive  as  Burns,  the  life  must  be  judged  by 
the  writings,  and  not  the  writings  by  the  life.  The  free  open 
joyousness,  the  manly  honesty  that  hated  sham  and  cant, 
the  religious  sensibilities  he  got  from  his  father  and  never 
wholly  lost,  the  struggling  aspirations  of  the  man,  his  soft 
pity  and  tenderness,  his  tremulous  susceptibility  to  whatever 
is  pure  and  gentle :  all  these  things  we  see  in  the  poetry;  and 
they  are  the  real  Burns, — the  heart  of  him.  For  it  isn't  so 
much  what  a  man  does,  as  what  he  tries  to  do,  or  even  longs 
to  do,  that  we  should  remember: 

What's  done  we  partly  may  compute 
But  know  not  what's  resisted. 

A  short  time  before  the  death  of  their  father,  Burns  and 
his  brother  Gilbert  had  leased  the  small  farm  of  Mossgiel, 
near  Mauchline,  and  thither  they  now  removed,  with  their 
mother  and  sister,  and  such  fragments  as  they  could  save 
from  the  wreck  of  the  family  fortunes.  Robert  now  set 
himself  at  work  with  the  desperate  resolve  to  be  a  thrifty 
farmer.  "I  read  farming  books,"  says  he,  "I  calculated 
crops.  I  attended  markets,  and  in  short,  in  spite  of  the  devil, 
the  world,  and  the  flesh,  I  believe  I  should  have  been  a  wise 


244  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

man:  but  the  first  year  from  unfortunately  buying  bad  seed, 
the  second  from  a  late  harvest  we  lost  half  our  crops. 
This  overset  all  my  wisdom."  I  am  afraid  that  the  world, 
the  flesh,  and  the  devil  must  share  with  bad  crops  and  bad 
seed  the  responsibility  for  Burns'  failure  as  farmer;  but  it  is 
to  be  noted  that  during  these  two  years  of  comparative 
thrift  and  persistence  he  produced  more  poetry  than  during 
all  the  rest  of  his  life  put  together.  If  he  could  have  been 
content  with  his  lot,  and  grown  old  as  peasant  poet,  un- 
spoiled by  praise  and  undisturbed  by  the  restless  longings  of 
more  idle  ambitions,  who  shall  say  what  stores  of  humor,  of 
wisdom,  and  of  pathos  his  ripened  experience  might  have 
left  us.  For  early  and  late  it  was  only  when  upon  his  farm 
that  Burns  was  a  poet.  But  here  for  a  little  time  he  kept 
himself  steady  to  one  course  of  life.  If  he  was  shut  out 
from  all  high  converse  with  books  and  men,  he  sought  the 
more  the  companionship  of  his  own  imagination.  He  lived 
out  of  doors  with  his  eyes  and  his  heart  open  to  the  charms 
of  rural  nature,  and  in  the  lives  of  the  homely  cottagers 
about  him  he  saw — more  clearly  perhaps  than  he  could  in  a 
more  artificial  society — those  truths  of  human  nature  that 
are  good  for  all  men  and  all  times.  It  was  in  the  Mossgiel 
field  that  the  mouse,  "wee,  sleekit,  cow'rin,  tim'rous  beastie," 
ran  from  his  ruined  nest  to  be  immortalized  in  pitying  verse 
which  we  shall  remember  so  long  as 

The  best-laid  schemes  o'  mice  an'  men 

Gang  aft  agley, 
An'  lea'e  us  nought  but  grief  an'  pain, 

For  promis'd  joy. 

And  it  was  in  the  Mauchline   church,   I   take   it,   that   the 
"ugly,  creepin',  blastit  wonner"  on 

The  vera  topmost,  tow'ring  height 
O'  Miss's  bonnet 

suggested  to  Burns  the  wish  we  can  all  take  to  heart, 

O  wad  some  Power  the  giftie  gie  us, 
To  see  oursels  as  ithers  see  us! 


ROBERT  BURNS  245 

His  Pegasus  was  his  old  mare,  Maggie,  and  his  choicest 
inspiration  came  to  him  at  the  plow-tail.  He  composed  his 
verses  mostly  out  of  doors,  while  plodding  slow  in  the  fur- 
row, or  digging  in  the  peat-bog,  and  then  at  evening  shutting 
himself  into  his  little  attic  chamber  wrote  them  out  by  the 
light  of  a  single  candle  and  laid  them  away  in  the  drawer  of 
an  old  deal  table,  where  his  sister  would  steal  up  to  read 
them  while  he  was  in  the  fields  at  work.  Mrs.  Oliphant 
remarks  that  by  the  early  summer  of  1786  there  must  have 
been  more  good  poetry  in  the  drawer  of  that  attic  table 
than  could  have  been  found  in  manuscript  anywhere  else  in 
Europe, — unless  possibly  it  were  in  the  portfolio  of  Herr 
Goethe  in  Weimar.  For  my  part,  I  should  be  inclined  to 
say  more.  This  poetry  that  for  two  years  this  man  has  been 
putting  into  this  attic  drawer,  if  you  measure  it  by  the 
variety  of  high  poetic  qualities  it  has, — imagination,  melody, 
humor,  pathos,  pithy  human  wisdom, — and  I  am  sure  that  if 
you  measure  it  by  its  power  to  meet  our  daily  human  sym- 
pathies,— "to  come  home  to  men's  business  and  bosoms", — 
you  will  have  to  say  of  this  drawer  full  of  verse  that  no  one 
writer  between  William  Shakespeare  and  Robert  Burns 
can  show  any  body  of  poetry  to  match  it.  And  yet  it  has 
been  written  by  a  plowman,  only  twenty-seven  years  old,  who 
was  never  more  than  about  a  dozen  miles  from  the  smoke 
of  his  cottage  and  never  saw  a  city,  who  has  never  owned 
a  score  of  books  in  his  life,  whose  only  friends  are  plain 
country  folk  with  no  relish  of  letters,  who  has  never  had  a 
word  of  distinctly  literary  criticism,  guidance,  or  suggestion 
from  any  one,  and  who  has  never  printed  a  line.  Here  as- 
suredly is  a  fact  worthy  the  notice  of  the  historian  of  litera- 
ture. 

Meantime  the  farm  was  a  failure;  and  other  things 
were  going  very  sadly.  In  the  summer  of  1786  came  the 
crisis  that  ends  the  first  chapter  of  Burns'  life.  It  was  a 
year  or  more  before  when  Burns,  walking  into  Mauchline 
village,  had  first  seen  the  comely  face  of  Jean  Armour.  Miss 
Jean  was  spreading  out  linen  upon  the  grass  to  bleach,  and 
as  Rab  Burns'  ever  present  dog  came  frisking  over  it  she 


246  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

threw  a  stone  at  the  dog  and  a  word  at  its  master.  "Lassie," 
said  Burns  with  a  laugh  in  his  eye,  "Lassie,  if  ye  thought 
oght  o'  me,  ye  wadna  hurt  my  dog."  "I  said  to  mysel," 
said  Jean  in  telling  the  story  long  after,  "I  said  to  mysel,  I 
wadna  think  much  o'  you  at  ony  rate."  But  Jean  reckoned 
without  her  host :  Rab  Burns  was  never  again  to  be  long  out 
of  her  thought  or  her  life.  The  next  spring,  1786,  to  shield 
so  far  as  possible  her  honor  and  his  own,  Burns  gave  to 
Jean  Armour  privately  a  written  agreement  of  marriage 
which  was  binding  before  the  Scottish  law.  About  the 
same  time,  Burns,  harassed  by  the  increasing  hardships  of 
his  lot,  resolved  to  try  to  mend  his  fortunes  abroad.  He 
accepted  a  position  as  bookkeeper  on  the  estate  of  a  Mr. 
Douglas  in  Jamaica.  He  had  not  even  the  few  pounds 
necessary  to  pay  his  passage,  and  to  get  them  he  resolved, 
at  the  suggestion  of  his  friend,  Gavin  Hamilton,  to  print 
the  verses  that  lay  in  the  drawer  of  that  attic  table.  All 
this  in  March  of  1786.  It  seems  to  me  certain  from  the 
letters  of  the  poet  that  it  was  about  the  first  of  April — 
after  Burns  had  taken  his  resolution  to  go  to  Jamaica,  and 
not  before,  as  all  the  biographies  say  or  imply — that  Jean 
Armour's  father  discovered  the  relations  between  Burns  and 
his  daughter.  James  Payne,  the  novelist,  tells  somewhere 
in  his  Reminiscences  of  a  hard-headed  Scotchman  who  rec- 
ommended most  warmly  the  moral  character  of  one  of  his 
young  friends,  and  on  being  reminded  of  some  rather  dark 
facts  in  the  young  fellow's  record  rejoined  eagerly — "Hoot, 
man!  that's  not  what  I  mean  by  immoral;  but  gamblin,'  and 
sic  things  as  ye  lose  money  by !"  Old  Armour's  standard  of 
morality  seems  to  have  been  of  that  kind;  for  he  cared  less 
for  the  reputation  of  his  daughter  than  for  her  fortune.  He 
would  not  consent  that  girl  of  his  should  for  any  reason 
whatever  become  the  wife  of  so  poor  and  shiftless  a  fellow 
as  Robert  Burns;  and  insisted  that  she  destroy  the  marriage 
contract.  Jean  consented, — too  willingly,  Burns  thought; 
the  writing  was  torn  up ;  Jean  went  away  from  Mauchline, 
and  the  father  threatened  young  Burns  with  legal  proceed- 
ings.    Sad  and  pitiful  details,  over  which  one  would  not 


ROBERT  BURNS  247 

wish  to  linger:  but  they  cannot  be  forgotten  in  recounting 
the  career  of  the  poet;  for  they  really  did  much  to  shorten 
and  darken  that  career.  Burns  had  blighted  his  future;  his 
work  as  a  poet  in  fact  was  nearly  done  before  a  single  line 
of  his  poetry  had  been  printed.  More  than  nine-tenths  of 
all  the  poems  we  know  and  love  were  written  before  he  left 
Mossgiel. 

The  later  biographers  of  Burns  have  obliged  us — some- 
what reluctantly — to  believe  that  it  is  in  this  same  unlucky 
spring  of  1786,  that  we  must  place  the  pathetic  story, — best 
known  of  all  that  find  record  in  Burns'  life, — the  story  of 
Highland  Mary.  Yet  we  must  not  accuse  him  of  cold  hy- 
pocrisy or  downright  treachery.  In  April  Burns  found  that 
Jean  had  disavowed  the  marriage  plight,  had  consented  to 
the  destruction  of  the  sacred  paper,  and  had  gone  away 
from  Mauchline.  He  was  torn  by  a  throng  of  conflicting 
emotions,  in  which  sorrow  for  his  own  sin,  remorseful  pity 
for  Jean's  future,  and  hot  indignation  at  her  seeming  weak- 
ness and  treachery  were  strangely  mingled.  This  tumult  of 
feeling  is  seen  in  the  odes,  To  Despondency  and  To  Ruin,  in 
that  touching  poem,  The  Lament,  and  in  the  more  familiar 
lines  to  that  daisy  which  one  day  in  that  same  April  he  saw 
roll  down  under  the  turning  sod  as  he  plodded  wearily  be- 
hind the  plow: — 

Wee,  modest,  crimson-tipped  flow'r, 

Thou's  met  me  in  an  evil  hour; 

For  I  maun  crush  amang  the  stoure 

Thy  slender  stem : 
To  spare  thee  now  is  past  my  pow'r, 

Thou  bonie  gem. 

Alas!  it's  no  thy  neebor  sweet, 
The  bonie  lark,  companion  meet, 
Bending  thee  'mang  the  dewy  weet, 

Wi'  spreckl'd  breast  1 
When  upward-springing,  blythe,  to  greet 

The  purpling  east. 

•  •  •  •  •  •  • 

There,  in  thy  scanty  mantle  clad, 
Thy  snawie  bosom  sun-ward  spread, 


248  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Thou  lifts  thy  unassuming  head 

In  humble  guise; 
But  now  the  share  uptears  thy  bed, 

And  low  thou  lies! 

Such  is  the  fate  of  simple  Bard, 

On  Life's  rough  ocean  luckless  starr'd! 

Unskilful  he  to  note  the  card 

Of  prudent  lore, 
Till  billows  rage,  and  gales  blow  hard, 

And  whelm  him  o'er! 

•  •••••• 

Ev'n  thou  who  mourn 'st  the  Daisy's  fate, 
That  fate  is  thine — no  distant  date; 
Stern  Ruin's  plough-share  drives  elate, 

Full  on  thy  bloom, 
Till  crush 'd  beneath  the  furrow's  weight, 

Shall  be  thy  doom! 

It  is  easy  to  say  how  a  man  of  firmer  fiber  and  more 
noble  character  might  have  borne  himself  in  such  circum- 
stances; but  it  seems  to  me  very  natural  that  Burns  with  his 
volatile  temper  and  his  hunger  for  affection  should  just  then 
accept  first  the  gentle  pity  of  Highland  Mary,  and  then  the 
love  to  which  that  pity  is  proverbially  akin.  Of  Mary 
Campbell  we  really  know  nothing  save  that  she  had  once 
been  a  dairy  maid,  and  was  now  at  service  in  the  family  of 
Burns'  friend,  Hamilton.  But  one  thinks  she  must  have 
been  a  girl  whose  sweet  modesty  had  something  firm  and 
self-respecting  in  it.  Certain  it  is  that  the  few  verses  Burns 
addressed  to  her,  or  which  enshrine  this  Mary  of  his,  have 
not  only  tenderness  and  ardor,  but  respect  as  well.  I  feel 
sure  that  this  Highland  lass  seemed  to  Burns  in  that  spring 
of  1786  the  embodiment  of  purity  and  truth,  and  that 
thoughts  of  her  could  summon  whatever  of  firm  resolve  and 
chaste  affection  was  yet  possible  to  him.  She  was,  you  know, 
the  Mary  in  memory  of  whom  he  wrote  that  song  which  to 
so  many  of  us  is  among  the  recollections  of  our  childhood, 
sung  by  lips  over  which  nothing  impure  could  ever  breathe, — 
"Flow  gently,  sweet  Afton,  among  thy  green  braes." 

We  all  remember  the  oft-told  story, — how  on  the  14th 


ROBERT  BURNS  249 

of  May  they  met  and  parted  for  the  last  time,  by  the  banks 
of  Ayr,  exchanged  their  Bibles,  and  standing  one  on  either 
side  of  the  stream  with  hands  clasped  over  the  murmuring 
water  pledged  their  lasting  love  and  faith.  Burns  expected 
before  the  summer  was  over  to  go  to  Jamaica;  and  Mary 
was  starting  for  her  home  in  the  Highlands  whence  she  was 
to  return  to  meet — it  seems  likely  to  wed — her  lover  before 
he  crossed  the  sea.  But  Burns  was  never  to  go  to  the  Indies ; 
and  poor  Mary  was  never  to  return  from  the  Highlands 
or  to  see  his  face  again.  The  scene  of  that  parting  might 
well  be  a  shrine  for  lovers'  and  for  poets'  visits:  and  I  can 
aver  that  one  humble  pilgrim  who  could  not  claim  to  belong 
to  either  class,  when  he  first  found  his  way,  one  summer 
afternoon  not  many  years  since,  to  that  secluded  spot,  felt 
that  the  charm  of  the  poet's  love  and  verse  was  upon  it  yet, 
and  that  in  the  tranquil  beauty  of  leafy  glade  and  gurgling 
brook  the  wish  in  the  opening  stanza  of  that  sweetest  and 
saddest  of  songs  still  found  fulfillment: 

Ye  banks  and  braes  and  streams  around 

The  castle  o'  Montgomery, 
Green  be  your  woods,  and  fair  your  flowers, 

Your  waters  never  drumlie! 
There  summer  first  unfald  her  robes, 

And  there  the  langest  tarry! 
For  there  I  took  the  last  fareweel 

O'  my  sweet  Highland  Mary! 

How  sweetly  bloom'd  the  gay,  green  birlc, 

How  rich  the  hawthorn's  blossom, 
As  underneath  their  fragrant  shade 

I  clasp'd  her  to  my  bosom ! 
The  golden  hours  on  angel  wings, 

Flew  o'er  me  and  my  dearie; 
For  dear  to  me  as  light  and  life 

Was  my  sweet  Highland  Mary. 

Wi'  monie  a  vow,  and  lock'd  embrace 

Our  parting  was  fu'  tender; 
And,   pledging  aft  to  meet  again, 

We  tore  oursels  asunder. 
But  O,  fell  Death's  untimely  frost, 


250  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

That  nipt  my  flower  sae  early ! 
Now  green's  the  sod,  and  cauld's  the  clay, 
That  wraps  my  Highland  Mary! 

O  pale,  pale  now,  those  rosy  lips, 

I  aft  hae  kiss'd  sae  fondly; 
An  closed  for  ay,  the  sparkling  glance, 

That  dwalt  on  me  sae  kindly; 
And  mouldering  now  in  silent  dust 

That  heart  that  lo'ed  me  dearly! 
But  still  within  my  bosom's  core 

Shall  live  my  Highland  Mary. 

On  the  events  of  that  unhappy  summer  it  is  not  necessary 
to  linger.  In  July  came  the  publication  of  the  poems. 
The  fame  of  them  ran  quickly  through  the  poet's  native 
Ayrshire,  and  doors  were  open  to  the  young  fellow  where 
he  had  never  been  known  before.  Some  copies  got  to  Edin- 
burgh, and  there  among  the  dons  the  verdict  was  the  same 
as  among  the  country  folk.  And  finally  one  day  in  October, 
the  great  Professor  Dugald  Stewart  of  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity, staying  for  some  weeks  in  the  country  near  Mauchline, 
invited  the  peasant  poet  to  dine,  and  the  guest  that  sits  next 
him  at  dinner  is  a  real  lord, — 

October  twenty-third, 
A  ne'er-to-be  forgotten  day, 
Sae  far  I  sprachl'd  up  the  brae 

I  dinner'd  wi'  a  Lord. 

All  this  could  not  but  start  new  hopes  in  the  breast  of 
Burns.  The  possibilities  of  a  new  career  glimmered  before 
him.  His  determination  to  go  to  the  Indies  wavered.  He 
had  the  hearty  Scottish  love  for  his  native  soil,  and  he 
dreaded  the  thought  of  exile.  And  there  were  dearer  ties, 
which,  reason  as  he  would,  he  could  not  throw  off.  For  Jean 
was  home,  with  her  twin  babes.  But,  after  all,  there  seemed 
for  him  no  other  course.  He  kept  to  his  determination  to 
sail  for  Jamaica  about  the  last  of  October.  He  secured  his 
passage.  He  paid  his  last  visit  to  kind  Dr.  Lawrie,  and 
walking  home  at  nightfall  across  the  dreary  moors  com- 


ROBERT  BURNS  251 

posed  that  plaintive  "Farewell,"  set  to  an  old  Scots  air 
that  moans  and  croons  like  the  sighing  wind  over  a  lonely 
land: 

The  gloomy  night  is  gath'ring  fast, 
Loud  roars  the  wild  inconstant  blast  ; 
Yon  murky  cloud  is  filled  with  rain, 
I  see  it  driving  o'er  the  plain; 

•  ••••••• 

Chill  runs  my  blood  to  hear  it  rave: 
I  think  upon  the  stormy  wave, 
Where  many  a  danger  I  must  dare, 
Far  from  the  bonie  banks  of  Ayr. 

'Tis  not  the  surging  billows'  roar, 
'Tis  not  that  fatal,  deadly  shore; 
Tho'  death  in  ev'ry  shape  appear, 
The  wretched  have  no  more  to  fear: 
But  round  my  heart  the  ties  are  bound, 
That  heart  transpierc'd  with  many  a  wound  ; 
These  bleed  afresh,  those  ties  I  tear, 
To  leave  the  bonie  banks  of  Ayr. 

But  just  at  the  last  minute  came  word  again  from  Dr.  Black- 
lock  up  in  Edinburgh,  calling  for  a  new  edition  of  the  poems, 
and  promising  for  them  a  "more  universal  circulation  than 
anything  of  the  kind  which  has  been  published  in  my 
memory."  This  reversed  the  wavering  decision  of  the  poet. 
He  decided  to  remain  in  Scotland,  and  to  go  up  to  Edin- 
burgh to  superintend  the  new  edition  of  his  poems  that  was 
to  be  issued  there. 

So  far  as  I  can  make  out  the  dates,  it  could  not  have  been 
more  than  a  fortnight  before  he  set  out  for  Edinburgh  that 
an  incident  occurred  which  must  have  added  one  last  and 
bitterest  drop  to  the  heart  full  of  secret  sorrows  which  the 
young  man  carried  with  him  to  the  scene  of  his  triumph. 
He  was  at  home  at  Mossgiel  one  evening  when  a  letter  was 
brought  him.  "He  turned  to  the  window  to  read  it,  and 
the  family  noted  on  a  sudden  that  his  face  changed.  He 
went  out  without  speaking:  and  they  respected  his  silence 
and  said  no  word."  That  letter  contained  the  intelligence 
that  Highland  Mary,  having  come  from  her  home  as  far  as 


252  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Greenock  to  meet  Burns,  had  sickened  there  and  died. 
Perhaps  it  was  better  so. 

The  love  where  Death  has  set  his  seal, 
Nor  age  can  chill,  nor  rival  steal, 
Nor  falsehood  disavow. 

But  with  what  despair  of  any  calm  and  peaceful  content- 
ment in  his  fame,  must  this  young  poet  have  gone  up  to 
meet  his  great  friends  in  Edinburgh ! 

It  is  easy  to  understand  why  that  little  volume  of  verse 
found  so  many  eager  readers  in  Edinburgh;  so  long  as 
pathos,  humor,  and  melody  are  alive  in  the  human  heart 
these  verses  will  find  eager  readers  in  every  clime.  But  it  is 
not  so  easy  for  us  nowadays,  living  as  we  do  after  the  close 
of  that  great  poetic  era  which  Burns  began,  to  realize  what  a 
surprise  this  little  book  must  have  been  to  all  lovers  of 
poetry.  It  came  at  a  time  when  the  poetic  muse,  now  grown 
a  very  prim  and  proper  person,  seemed  about  to  desert 
Britain  altogether.  In  England  there  was  only  Cowper,  and 
he  was  not  the  vogue;  in  Scotland  there  was  nobody.  Just 
when  Mr.  Robert  Burns  came  up  to  Edinburgh,  the  literary 
lions  of  the  Scottish  capital  were  Dr.  Blair,  whose  rhetoric 
book  our  fathers  used  conscientiously  to  cram,  but  whose 
writings — so  far  as  I  have  ever  looked  into  them — are  as 
polished  and  as  cold  as  any  gravestone;  Dr.  Beattie,  whose 
long  poem,  The  Minstrel,  is  a  curious  attempt  to  give  a 
romantic  flavor  to  the  warmed  over  philosophy  of  Pope; 
and  the  "Man  of  Feeling"  Mackenzie,  editor  of  the 
Lounger,  one  of  the  innumerable  periodicals  on  the  model 
of  the  Spectator, — a  pleasant,  graceful,  rather  shallow, 
courteous  man,  mere  Addison  and  water. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  easy,  then,  I  say,  to  realize  how  wel- 
come to  a  society  which  began  to  weary  of  these  feeble  ar- 
tificialities in  literature  must  have  been  this  little  book  of 
homely  Scottish  verse,  as  new  and  fresh  as  if  it  were  the  first 
ever  written.  Here  was  a  volume  of  verse  with  no  chill 
philosophy,  no  attempt  at  courtly  grace,  none  of  the  old 
academic  rhetoric,  and  not  even  a  couplet  of  the  old  Popish 


ROBERT  BURNS  253 

sort ;  no  more  like  the  poetry  of  the  old  school  than  the  song 
of  a  blackbird  is  like  a  lecture  on  ethics,  and  yet  even  the 
infallible  Dr.  Blair  was  forced  to  admit  that  it  was  poetry, 
and  poetry  of  a  very  remarkable  kind.  It  is  now  a  com- 
monplace of  English  literary  history  to  say  that  with  Burns 
nature  and  passion,  after  their  long  absence  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years,  came  back  again  to  English  verse.  And  in 
these  particulars,  the  change  could  go  no  further  than  it  goes 
in  this  poetry  of  Burns.  Consider  his  naturalness.  Of  all 
our  poets  of  anything  like  equal  eminence,  Burns  is  by  far 
the  most  simple  and  direct  in  utterance.  His  phrase  al- 
ways seems  the  homely,  obvious  one  that  comes  unsought. 
There  are  no  inversions,  no  rhetorical  devices,  no  sense  of 
the  burdensomeness  of  meter;  he  simply  warmed  his  thought 
till  it  glowed,  and  ran  melting  into  verse.  There  are  num- 
berless stanzas  in  his  verse  where  the  simple  diction  and 
structure  of  prose  seem  to  glide  unawares  into  the  most 
melodious  poetry, — 

Ye  banks  and  braes  and  streams  around 
The  castle  o'   Montgomery, 

or,  again,  in  different  voice, 

Some  books  are  lies  frae  end  to  end, 
And  some  great  lies  were  never  penn'd: 
Ev'n  ministers,  they  hae  been  kend, 

In  holy  rapture, 
A  rousing  whid  at  times  to  vend, 

And  nail't  wi'  Scripture. 

The  poetry  of  Burns  is,  indeed,  so  spontaneous  and  its 
charm  so  obvious  and  so  homely  that  critical  comment  seems 
needless,  almost  impertinent.  Yet  this  ability  to  set  in  poetry 
the  beauty,  humor,  and  pathos  of  a  narrow  and  humble  life, 
while  you  are  actually  living  that  life,  so  far  from  being  a 
common  endowment,  is  one  of  the  very  rarest.  Some  of 
Burns'  Scottish  admirers  are  inclined  to  resent  the  applica- 
tion of  the  title  "peasant  poet"  to  Burns,  as  seeming  to  imply 
that  our  estimate  of  him  is  based  not  so  much  upon  the 


254  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

absolute  poetic  value  of  what  he  did,  as  upon  a  wonder  that 
in  his  circumstances  he  could  do  anything.  He  is  to  be 
thought  of  as  a  great  poet,  say  they,  not  as  a  peasant  poet. 
Well,  he  was  a  great  poet;  but  it  is  also  worthy  of  remark, 
I  think,  that  he  is  the  only  great  English  poet  who  really 
stands  among  the  people  while  he  sings.  Wordsworth  in 
that  famous  preface  of  his  insisted  that  poetry  could  best 
find  its  themes  in  the  life  of  humble  folk;  yet  Wordsworth 
always  regarded  that  life  from  the  outside  with  the  eye  of 
a  reflective  observer.  Though  the  peasant  might  suggest 
thought  to  Wordsworth,  Wordsworth  was  very  far  from 
thinking  like  the  peasant.  But  Burns  really  shared  the  life 
he  sang,  both  in  its  outward  circumstance  and  its  inward 
character.  It  is  this  which  so  endears  him  to  the  popular 
heart  of  Scotland.  No  poet  is  so  beloved,  I  think,  by  his 
own  countrymen.  The  most  rigid  righteous  of  Scotsmen 
have  some  words  of  sympathy  and  excuse  for  Robert  Burns; 
the  most  prosaic  and  untuneful  feel  some  responsive  thrill  at 
the  music  of  his  song.  Nor  is  it  only  in  Scotland  that  Burns 
is  thus  regarded.  His  verses  are  hardly  less  familiar  or  less 
dear  to  all  English-speaking  people.  Few  indeed  are  those 
who  have  read  any  English  book  at  all,  that  do  not  know  the 
moving  lines  of  Auld  Lang  Syne,  or  John  Anderson,  My  Jo, 
or  Flow  Gently,  Sweet  Afton,  or  Highland  Mary. 

But  if  Burns  is  a  popular  poet,  he  is  a  great  poet,  too. 
He  belongs  to  the  people,  but  he  belongs  also  to  the  im- 
mortals. He  has  the  first  great  gift  of  the  poet,  the  gift  to 
make  life  of  deeper  interest.  His  range  of  experience  may 
not  have  been  very  wide :  he  had  not  the  power,  like  Words- 
worth, to  lift  us  to  heights  of  calm  reflection  where  we  get 
sight  of  those  primal  spiritual  truths 

Which,  be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain  light  of  all  our  day; 

but  no  man  gives  us  a  more  thrilling  sympathy  for  all  the 
common  joys  and  sorrows  of  our  human  lot.  No  matter 
how  narrow  or  how  homely  is  the  sphere  in  which  this  man's 
life  must  move,  he  throws  himself  into  it  with  such  abandon 


ROBERT  BURNS  255 

as  to  make  us  feel  afresh  with  him  all  the  humor,  the  pathos, 
the  passion,  of  living. 

In  this  passionate  intensity  of  the  man  resides,  I  take  it, 
the  chief  fascination  of  his  poetry.  Whenever  we  get  a 
glimpse  of  him,  pouring  some  tender  confidence  into  the  ear 
of  a  rustic  lass,  or  loudest  in  the  song  at  the  Masons'  meet- 
ing in  Tarbolton,  or  standing  with  kindling  eyes  in  the  midst 
of  a  ring  of  the  dons  and  ladies  of  Edinburgh  delighting 
them  all  by  his  eager  converse,  he  is  always  all  alive  with 
some  emotion.  How  warm  and  tender  is  the  heart  of  him  ! 
His  pathos  is  so  simple  and  honest  that  it  starts  the  tear 
before  we  are  aware.  His  sympathies  go  even  beyond  the 
limits  of  humanity,  and  his  pity  stirs  for  the  wounded  hare 
that  limps  past  him,  or  "ilk  happing  bird, — wee,  helpless 
thing," — that  cowers  its  "chittering  wing"  beneath  the  win- 
ter's blast.  There  is  all  the  tenderness  and  truth  of  long- 
tried  friendship  in  his  address  to  his  Auld  Mare  Maggie: 

Monie  a  sair  darg  we  twa  hae  wrought, 
An'  wi'  the  weary  warl'  fought! 
An'  monie  an  anxious  day,  I  thought 

We  wad  be  beat! 
Yet  here  to  crazy  age  we're  brought, 

Wi'  something  yet. 

An'  think  na,  my  auld,  trusty  servan', 
That  now  perhaps  thou's  less  deservin, 
An'  thy  auld  days  may  end  in  starvin, 

For  my  last  fow, 
A  heapit  stimpart,  I'll  reserve  ane 

Laid  by  for  you, — 

lines  which  arc  said  to  have  drawn  the  tears  and  humanized 
the  heart  of  an  Edinburgh  drayman. 

And  yet,  when  in  another  mood  who  takes  his  joys  with 
so  keen  a  relish?  There  is  a  buoyancy  in  his  verse  that 
gives  a  new  zest  to  life.  He  sings — and  perhaps  it  would 
have  been  well  had  he  oftener  sung — the  humble  joys  of 
the  cottager  when 

Th'    expectant    wee-things,    toddlin,    stachrr    through 
To  meet  their  dad,  wi'  flichterin'  noisr  an'  glee. 


256  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

His  wee  bit  ingle,  blinkin  bonilie, 

His  clean  hearth-stane,  his  thrifty  wifie's  smile, 

The  lisping  infant,  prattling  on  his  knee, 
Does  a'  his  weary  kiaugh  and  care  beguile, 

An'  makes  him  quite  forget  his  labor  and  his  toil. 

And  we  set  the  verses  in  memory  as  our  choicest  picture  of 
the  "happy  fireside  clime  of  home."  Or,  when  his  fortunes 
glower,  and  fate  has  him  in  a  corner,  he  daffs  her  aside 
with  a  careless  humor  most  contagious, — 

Whene'er  I  forgather  wi'  Sorrow  and  Care, 
I  gie  them  a  skelp  as  they're  creepin  alang, 
Wi'  a  cog  o'  guid  swats  and  an  auld  Scottish  sang. 

I  whyles  claw  the  elbow  o'   troublesome  Thought; 

But  Man  is  a  soger,  and  Life  is  a  faught. 

My  mirth  and  guid  humour  are  coin  in  my  pouch, 

And  my  Freedom's  my  lairdship  nae  monarch  daur  touch. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  there  is  more  humor  in  the 
poetry  of  Burns  than  any  other  English  poet  since  Shake- 
speare can  show.  It  is  somewhat  remarkable  how  little 
there  is  of  that  quality  in  any  of  that  company  of  poets  of 
whom  he  was  the  immediate  predecessor.  Burns'  humor 
runs  through  a  wide  range  of  moods,  from  the  bright  arch- 
ness of  such  songs  as  Tarn  Glen  or  Duncan  Gray,  through 
such  droll  waggery  as  that  in  Death  and  Dr.  Hornbook  or 
the  Address  to  the  Dell,  to  the  rollicking  fun  of  Tarn  o' 
Shanter  and  the  wild  carouse  of  The  Jolly  Beggars.  But  in 
all  its  moods  there  is  the  same  bounding  life,  the  same 
elastic  force  of  spirit.  It  is  never  the  humor  of  a  cool  and 
caustic  man.  Even  in  his  satire  there  is  nothing  sullen  or 
morose.  He  heartily  dislikes  what  he  chooses  to  think  cant 
and  hypocrisy  and  he  heaps  his  ridicule  upon  it  without  stint: 

Be    to   the   poor   like   onie  whunstane, 
And  haud  their  noses  to  the  grunstane; 
Ply  ev'ry  art  o'  legal  thieving; 
No  matter — stick  to  sound  believing. 

But  there  is  at  all  events  something  open  and  whole-souled 
even  in  his  abuse.     He  never  sulks  and  nurses  a  grudge  to 


ROBERT  BURNS  257 

keep  it  warm.  His  ridicule  always  has  a  basis  of  good 
nature.  You  remember  that  even  from  the  Father  of  Lies 
himself  he  cannot  part  without  a  word  of  droll  commisera- 
tion: 

But    fare-you-weel,    Auld    Nickie-Ben! 
O,  wad  ye  tak  a  thought  an'  men, 
Ye  aiblins  might — I  dinna  ken — 
Still  hae  a  stake: 
I'm  wae  to  think  upo'  yon  den, 
Ev'n  for  your  sake! 

In  its  odd  mixture  of  waggish  impudence  and  honest  kind- 
liness this  seems  to  me  quite  inimitable.  Such  an  irrepres- 
sible flow  of  good  spirits  is  there  in  this  man. 

I  fear  it  may  be  suggested  that  in  some  of  his  verse  there 
is  evidence  of  the  flow  of  spirits  of  another  kind.  I  sup- 
pose Burns  has  too  much  glorified  the  baleful  power  of 
Scotch  drink,  and  I  am  not  minded  to  put  in  any  defense  for 
him.  Certainly  I  am  no  great  lover  of  bacchanalian  song 
myself;  yet  I  must  own  myself  an  admirer  not  only  of  Tarn 
o'  Shanter,  but  even  of  The  Jolly  Beggars,  though  neither 
of  them  is  among  the  work  of  Burns  that  I  think  we  prize 
most.  I  judge  neither  of  them,  however,  owes  much  to 
drink;  it  is  rather  the  rushing,  heedless  tide  of  life  in  them 
that  captivates  our  attention  and  carries  us  away  by  main 
force.  But  his  humor  is  most  to  my  liking  when  it  is  drawn 
from  no  grosser  inspiration  than  his  own  exuberant  joyous- 
ness.  Such  poems  as  Hallowe'en  or  The  Twa  Dogs  are  a 
pure  and  healthy  exhilaration  of  soul. 

This  intensity  of  spirit  is  seen  best,  perhaps,  in  his  songs, 
in  his  love-songs  best  of  all.  I  think  the  love-songs  of  Burns 
are,  on  the  whole,  the  best  in  the  language.  I  could  wish 
sometimes  that  there  were  a  little  more  courtesy  and  defer- 
ence with  their  ardency;  they  lack  perhaps  something  of  that 
reverence  which  must  always  hallow  the  best  love  of  man  for 
woman.  But  they  lack  nothing  else.  They  have  imagina- 
tion, fire,  tenderness,  and  the  abandon  of  entire  devotion. 
Earnest,  simple,  without  a  single  note  of  affectation  or  pret- 
tiness,  they  gush  warm  from  the  heart.     To  say  or  to  sing 


258  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

some  of  these  songs  is  to  be  young  again,  and  to  feel  once 
more  the  unslackened  pulse  of  early  love  and  hope.  To  the 
end  of  time  will  lovers  go  a-wooing  with  these  verses  in 
their  hearts. 

And  Burns  has  not  only  the  poet's  sensitiveness  and  in- 
tensity, but  the  poet's  vision,  too.  His  imagination  is  not 
very  wide-ranging,  I  suppose,  and  it  certainly  is  not  serene 
and  continuous.  It  is  the  imagination  that  gives  us  sudden 
vivid  glimpses, — characteristically  the  lyric  imagination. 
What  he  sees,  he  sees  with  wonderful  clearness  and  truth. 
His  remarkable  terseness  of  phrase  is  owing  often  to  this 
keenness  of  vision:  he  doesn't  need  to  heap  up  epithets, 
he  flashes  his  image  before  you  in  a  single  phrase.  Do  you 
remember  the  two  lines  in  his  Address  to  the  Deil — untrans- 
latable into  English  like  most  of  his  good  things — in  which 
he  sees  Auld  Nick  "on  the  strong-wing'd  tempest  flyin', 
Tirlin  the  kirks?"  What  startling  distinctness  in  that 
glimpse  of  the  Prince  of  the  Power  of  the  Air;  as  well  as 
what  perfect  deviltry!  Very  beautiful  are  some  of  these 
vivid  momentary  gleams  in  his  pathetic  verse.  Take  for 
one  example  only  two  lines  quoted  by  Carlyle  from  the  song 
Open  the  Door  to  Me,  O — 

The  wan  moon  sets  behind  the  white  wave, 
And  Time  is  setting  with  me,  O. 

In  the  sheer  simplicity  of  mournful  power  they  are  quite 
in  the  manner  of  the  greatest  masters. 

To  these  more  distinctively  poetic  endowments  we  must 
add  a  great  fund  of  common  sense.  He  had  the  genuine 
Scottish  interest  in  conduct,  and  a  homely  vigor  of  thought 
upon  the  concerns  of  life.  It  is  almost  surprising  to  note 
how  large  a  part  of  the  body  of  popular  quotation  from  his 
work  is  made  up  of  bits  of  pithy  practical  wisdom : 

To  step  aside  is  human ; 

What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 
But  know  not  what's  resisted; 


ROBERT  BURNS  259 

The  heart  ay's,  the  part  ay 
That  makes  us  right  or  wrang; 

O  wad  some  power  the  giftie  gie  us, 
To  see  oursels  as  ithers  see  us! 

The  rank  is  but  the  guinea's  stamp, 
The  man's  the  gowd  for  a'  that. 

In  this  ability  to  put  plain  truths  into  their  final  literary 
expression  Burns  reminds  us  now  and  then  of  Pope;  only 
Pope's  truths  are  neat  specimens  of  pointed  and  polished 
satire,  while  Burns'  homely  maxims  are  warmed  by  good 
humor  and  winged  by  imagination. 

And  now  if  we  unite  all  these  qualities, — his  power  of 
simple  yet  most  melodious  verse;  his  quick  sympathy  with 
all  the  common  joy  and  pain  of  life;  his  fulness  and  intensity 
of  nature,  manifesting  itself  now  in  melting  pity  and  tender- 
ness, now  in  humor  ranging  from  height  archness  to  the 
wildest  overflow  of  spirits;  his  vivid  imagination;  and  his 
rugged  Scottish  vigor  of  intellect, — have  we  not  in  truth  the 
endowment  of  a  great  poet?  And  when  we  remember  that 
the  poetry  in  which  these  powers  are  shown  was  all  drawn 
from  the  experience  of  an  unlettered  young  man  among 
the  humblest  folk  of  a  little  Scottish  parish,  that  it  has  no 
charm  of  culture  or  literary  flavor,  but  holds  us  by  its  power 
to  move  those  deep  human  feelings  that  belong  alike  to  all, 
— then  we  shall  understand  why  Robert  Burns  is  not  only  a 
great  poet,  but  the  great  popular  poet.  Surely  no  other 
Fnglish  poet  succeeded  in  writing  before  the  age  of  twenty- 
seven  so  much  verse  of  equal  interest  to  the  man  of  letters 
and  the  man  of  toil  as  Robert  Burns  had  put  into  that  little 
book  he  carried  with  him  up  to  Edinburgh. 

I  shall  not  dwell  at  length  upon  the  remaining  chapter  of 
Burns'  story.  For  it  seems  to  me,  as  I  have  already  said, 
that  his  career  as  a  man  was  virtually  decided,  and  his  career 
as  a  poet  almost  ended  before  he  went  up  to  Edinburgh 
at  all. 

What  a  sudden  and  brilliant  triumph  he  had  there  we 
all  know.     Before  he  has  been  in  Edinburgh  a  month  he  has 


26o  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

met  most  of  the  culture  and  fashion  of  the  town.  He  dines 
with  duchesses  and  he  is  stared  at  on  the  street.  Jeffrey 
used  to  say  he  remembered  that  when  he  was  a  boy  in  his 
teens  some  one  in  a  shop-door  tapped  him  on  the  shoulder 
and  pointed  to  a  man  on  the  street, — "Ay,  lad,  see  him !  Ye 
do  well  to  look  at  yon  man;  that's  Robbie  Burns."  I  don't 
remember  any  case  where  literary  fame  has  given  such 
sudden  social  eclat. 

There  was  doubtless  a  factitious  element  in  this  popu- 
larity. Fine  sentiments  about  the  equality  of  man  and  the 
nobility  of  humble  virtue  were  very  fashionable  just  then, 
not  only  in  Paris  but  in  Edinburgh,  and  here  was  a  poet  who 
illustrated  these  all  in  his  own  person.  Yet  in  the  main,  I 
think,  Burns'  welcome  to  Edinburgh  was  based  on  a  genuine 
appreciation  of  his  work. 

And  in  the  main  Burns  bore  himself  very  well  among  his 
great  friends.  He  showed  no  silly  vanity,  he  showed  no  em- 
barrassment or  affectation,  only  an  occasional  urgency  of 
manner  which  arose  from  an  uneasy  consciousness  of  social 
differences.  For  Burns  always  felt  himself  outside  that 
circle  whose  hospitalities  were  for  a  time  so  freely  proffered 
him,  and  saw  how  his  popularity  was  likely  to  end.  He  knew 
that  what  called  itself  the  best  society  of  Edinburgh  would 
hardly  admit  to  intimate  membership  a  young  fellow  from 
Ayrshire  whose  entire  earthly  possessions  amounted  to  some 
fifty  pounds,  and  who  leaves  the  drawing  rooms  of  Princes 
Street  to  return  at  night  to  lodgings  in  Baxter's  Close,  Lawn- 
market,  hired  in  company  with  a  lad  from  his  native  town  at 
the  price  of  three  shillings  a  week.  That  knowledge  was  not 
cheering.  He  felt  with  bitterness  that  he  was  making  many 
acquaintances,  but  few  friends;  and  he  felt  with  an  added 
pang  that  these  new  friends  belonged  to  a  circle  to  which  it 
seemed  hopeless  for  him  to  aspire.  Nothing  in  his  new  ex- 
periences, we  may  be  sure,  could  have  had  a  greater  fascina- 
tion for  this  young  man  than  the  society  of  refined  and  ac- 
complished women,  to  which  he  had  hitherto  been  quite  a 
stranger.  And  yet  of  all  those  whom  he  met  in  the  early 
months  of  his  Edinburgh  sojourn  only  one  seems  to  have 


ROBERT  BUKNS  261 

proved  herself  a  life-long  friend  to  him.  Miss  Margaret 
Chalmers  told  the  poet  Campbell  in  after  years  that  Burns 
had  made  her  an  offer  of  marriage — as  he  would  probably 
have  done  to  any  young  lady  who  honored  him  with  her  ac- 
quaintance for  a  week;  Miss  Chalmers  declined  the  offer, 
wisely  I  suppose,  but  she  must  have  done  it  graciously,  too, 
for  Burns  always  accounted  her  one  of  his  truest  friends. 
His  letters  to  her  are,  I  am  sure,  the  best  he  ever  wrote,  anil 
the  very  last  song  he  ever  penned  with  failing  hand  ten 
years  later  was  one  in  which  his  thought  went  fondly  back 
to  that  "fairest  maid  on  Devon's  banks."  But  one  can 
imagine  how  some  dream  of  a  life  in  a  society  of  intellect 
and  culture  may  have  made  his  past  life  look  bleak  and 
barren,  and  have  deepened  his  aversion  to  a  return  to  the 
plow. 

Yet  it  is  doubtless  idle  to  blame  his  new  admirers  that 
they  did  nothing  more  for  him.  Still  more  idle  is  it,  to  rail, 
as  Burns  himself  was  sometimes  inclined  to,  at  the  necessary 
inequalities  of  society.  Certainly  the  poet  who  had  sung, 
as  no  man  ever  had  before,  the  nobility  of  toil,  the  charm 
of  humble  life  and  love,  should  not  now  have  forgotten 
the  lessons  of  his  verse.  Had  he  loved  the  truth,  had  he 
loved  his  art,  had  he  loved  anything  well  enough  to  make 
it  steadily  the  end  of  his  effort  and  his  desire,  his  future 
might  yet  have  been  bright.  But  it  was  too  late  now.  He 
had  abandoned  himself  to  his  impulses  so  long  that  he  had 
lost  the  power  of  singleness  of  aim,  of  fixed  and  resolute 
effort,  and  could  only  run  here  and  there  in  an  idle  chase 
after  enjoyment.  And  so  he  wasted  a  year  in  gossiping  de- 
lays, in  lazy,  rambling  summer  tours  through  Scotland,  and 
the  next  winter  found  him  still  in  Edinburgh  waiting  aim- 
lessly for  something  to  turn  up.  It  was  during  this  winter 
that  he  had  the  long  philandering  correspondence  with 
Clarinda.  Mrs.  McLehose  was  a  plump,  pleasant-man- 
nered, most  effusive  person,  just  the  poet's  age.  Her  hus- 
band, unfortunately  for  all  concerned,  had  left  her  rather 
shabbily,  and  gone  to  the  West  Indies;  and  Mrs.  McLehose 
seemed  to  have  wished  him  still  farther  away.     Her  feelings 


262  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

were  very  tender  and  she  always  had  an  abundant  supply  of 
them.  She  quoted  The  Sorrows  of  Werther;  she  wrote 
verses  on  the  "Friendship  of  the  Heart,"  which  Burns- 
Heaven  pardon  him! — pronounced  worthy  of  Sappho;  and 
she  declared  that  "for  many  years1'  she  "had  sought  for 
some  male  friend  endowed  with  sentiments  like  yours;  one 
who  could  love  me  with  tenderness  yet  unmixed  with  selfish- 
ness: who  could  be  my  friend,  companion,  protector."  She 
was  withal  very  religious,  and  seems  to  have  thought  to 
steady  a  rather  yielding  temperament  by  a  very  rigid  doc- 
trine, though  the  union  of  the  sentiment  of  Rousseau  with 
the  theology  of  Calvin  makes  a  somewhat  queer  combina- 
tion. She  appears  for  some  weeks  to  have  written  Burns  a 
kind  of  sermon  on  Sunday  evenings  to  correct  the  compli- 
ances of  Saturday  evenings.  That  Mrs.  McLehose  fell  very 
much  in  love  with  Burns,  one  must  admit,  with  a  kind  of  pity 
for  her;  she  was  always  trembling  on  the  verge  of  such  a 
catastrophe.  But  I  question  whether  the  answering  affec- 
tion of  Burns  was  very  deep.  Surely  some  of  Sylvander's 
letters  to  Clarinda  are  very  unedifying  reading  indeed.  For 
once  this  outspoken  man  can  write  mere  cant  and  sentimental 
vaporing.  I  don't  think  Robert  Burns  shines  in  such  com- 
position as  this : 

For  instance,  suppose  you  and  I  just  as  we  are  at  present,  the 
same  reasoning  powers,  sentiments,  and  even  desires;  the  same  fond 
curiosity  for  knowledge  and  remarking  observation  in  our  minds — 
and  imagine  our  bodies  free  from  pain  .  .  .  imagine  further  that  we 
were  set  free  from  the  laws  of  gravitation  which  bind  us  to  this 
globe,  and  could  at  pleasure  fly,  without  inconvenience,  through  all 
the  yet  unconjectured  bounds  of  creation — what  a  life  of  bliss  should 
we  lead  in  our  mutual  pursuit  of  virtue  and  knowledge,  and  our 
mutual  enjoyment  of  friendship  and  love! 

Don't  you  see  us  hand  in  hand,  or  rather  my  arm  about  your 
lovely  waist,  making  our  remarks  on  Sirius,  the  nearest  of  the  fixed 
stars;  or  surveying  a  comet  flaming  innoxious  by  us,  as  we  just  now 
would  mark  the  passing  pomp  of  a  travelling  monarch ;  or  in  a  shady 
bower  of  Mercury  or  Venus,  dedicating  the  hour  to  love  and  mutual 
converse,  relying  honour,  and  revelling  endearment — while  the  most 
exalted  strains  of  poesy  and  harmony  would  be  the  ready,  spon- 
taneous language  of  our  souls? 


ROBERT  BURNS  263 

Burns  kept  up  this  sort  of  thing  for  some  two  months,  but 
when  in  the  spring,  he  resolved  after  some  not  very  manly 
hesitation  to  fly — not  to  the  nearest  fixed  star — but  to 
Mauchline  and  take  to  himself  Jean  Armour  to  wife,  as  it 
was  his  duty  to  do,  I  don't  think  the  parting  with  Clarinda 
cost  him  many  pangs.  The  fact  is,  Burns  told  only  truth 
when  he  said  his  heart  had  been  aflame  so  many  times  that 
it  was  almost  vitrified.  No  dissipation  is  so  ruinous  as  the 
dissipation  of  the  affections,  and  Burns  had  been  throwing 
his  away  for  years. 

But  in  1788  he  began  his  last  struggle  to  lead  a  healthful 
and  ordered  life.  He  turned  his  back  on  Edinburgh.  He 
married  his  Jean.  He  leased  a  farm  at  Ellisland  and  set 
himself  resolutely  at  work  to  make  a  home  for  her  and  his 
children.  One  sees,  though,  from  such  a  letter  as  he  wrote 
Peggy  Chalmers,  September  16,  1788 — perhaps  the  most 
pathetic  letter  he  ever  wrote — that  it  was  with  many  a  long- 
ing, backward  look  that  Burns  left  the  city  for  his  farm; 
and  fears  that  it  was  duty  rather  than  affection  that  drew 
him  to  his  Jean.  Still,  it  was  much  to  have  manfully  ac- 
cepted his  duty;  and  for  a  little  time  hope  brightened  over 
his  life.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  sat  with  wife  and 
weans  about  his  own  fireside;  he  followed  his  plow  on 
his  own  acres,  and  tasted  for  a  time  the  joys  of  honest  in- 
dependence. As  might  have  been  expected,  when  his  emo- 
tions grew  healthy,  the  poetic  inspiration  returned  in  its 
old  purity  and  freshness.  It  was  at  Ellisland  he  wrote  Tarn 
Glen,  and  Auld  Lang  Syne,  and  Tarn  o'  Shanter,  and  Mary 
in  Heaven,  and  some  half  a  score  more  of  his  best  songs. 
He  said  afterward  it  was  the  happiest  period  of  his  life. 
Who  can  help  wishing  that  his  checkered  story  might  have 
ended  here ! 

But  the  sky  darkened  very  soon.  The  season  was  bad, 
and  the  soil  was  poor,  he  said.  Very  likely;  but  it  is  to  be 
feared  there  were  other  reasons.  Habits  of  thrift  and 
hardy  resolution  cannot  grow  up  in  a  day.  After  three 
years  he  gave  up  his  farm  altogether  and  removed  to  Dum- 
fries. 


264  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

In  this  dingy  and  vulgar  town  the  last  act  in  the  tragedy 
of  his  life  passed  drearily  to  its  close.  He  did  his  work  as 
an  exciseman  faithfully;  but  the  promotion  he  hoped  for  did 
not  come.  Those  were  the  feverish  days  of  the  French 
Revolution,  and  Burns  was  always  at  heart  in  sympathy  with 
the  popular  cause.  It  was  in  these  last  days  that  he  wrote 
that  really  great  song  which  may  be  called  the  first  mani- 
festo of  the  revolutionary  spirit  in  English  poetry,  A  Man's 
a  Man  for  Ay  That.  But  his  liberal  sentiments  did  not 
recommend  him  for  promotion.  Envious  people  spread 
rumors  that  Robert  Burns,  with  the  King's  commission  in 
his  pocket,  had  been  drinking  to  "the  last  chapter  of  the  last 
book  of  Kings."  Many  of  his  companions  were  of  a  sort 
to  do  him  little  good,  and  he  felt  himself  deserted  by  better 
folk.  One  remembers  Lockhart's  oft-told  story  of  the 
street  full  of  fine  ladies  and  gentlemen  on  their  way  to  the 
Dumfries  ball,  who  all  passed  by  on  the  other  side  with  no 
word  of  recognition  for  the  fallen  poet.  "Nay,  nay,"  said 
Burns  to  a  friend  who  suggested  that  he  join  them,  "Nay, 
nay,  that's  all  over  now" ;  and  after  a  pause  quoted  the  old 
Scotch  ballad, — 

Oh  were  we  young  as  we  ance  hae  been 

We  suld  hae  been  gallopin  down  on  yon  green, 

An  linkin  it  owre  the  lily-white  lea — 

And  werena  my  heart  light,  I  wad  dee. 

Now  and  then  as  the  clouds  that  hung  low  about  him  parted 
for  a  moment  he  broke  out  in  some  note  of  pure  and  touch- 
ing song;  but  his  habit  of  inspiration  had  fled.  The  bright- 
ness, the  elasticity  had  gone  out  of  his  life.  The  blue  sky, 
the  song  of  birds,  the  scent  of  new  mown  hay  in  sunny  fields, 
these  were  exchanged  for  the  clink  of  glasses  and  the  reek  of 
whisky  in  the  dirty  tap  room  of  the  Globe  Tavern.  His 
health  broke  down;  his  genial  spirits  failed.  He  sank 
from  bad  to  worse  till  the  end  came.  He  died  prematurely 
old  at  thirty-seven. 

As  we  think  upon  him  we  need  not  forget  the  stern  truth 
his  story  proves  too  well,  that  the  kindest  heart  and  the  most 


ROBERT  BURNS  265 

generous  impulses  cannot  save  from  disaster  a  life  that  will 
not  own  a  steady  allegiance  to  duty.  Still  less  need  we  ad- 
mit that  the  greatness  of  the  poet  was  due  to  the  weakness 
of  the  man.  On  the  contrary,  his  faults  as  a  man  are  pre- 
cisely the  faults  that  shut  him  out  from  the  little  company 
of  the  very  greatest  poets.  He  lacked  something  of  that 
moral  earnestness,  that  calm  elevation  of  spirit,  that  appre- 
ciation of  the  deepest  truth  which  set  a  man  highest  among 
the  immortal  singers.  His  emotions,  too,  on  which  the  lyric 
power  depends,  jaded  by  a  life  of  irregular  impulse  soon 
lost  something  of  their  vernal  purity;  they  kept  the  fire  but 
lost  the  dew  of  youth.  But  while  we  need  not  forget  these 
things,  we  may  remember — nay,  we  must  remember — how 
strait  were  the  barriers  within  which  fate  had  decreed  this 
passionate  nature  should  be  confined,  how  long  was  his  strug- 
gle, and  how  much  that  was  honest  and  noble  and  tender  he 
kept  in  his  life  till  the  end.  How  much  that  was  honest,  I 
say, — for  even  when  he  refused  to  do  his  duty,  he  would 
not  deny  it,  nor  excuse  himself  by  confusing  all  distinction 
of  right  and  wrong;  how  much  that  was  noble, — noble  scorn 
for  meanness  and  injustice,  noble  admiration  for  courage 
and  independence  and  all  the  sturdy  virtues  of  manhood; 
above  all,  how  much  that  was  tender  in  love  for  brother  man 
and  sister  woman,  in  great  charity  for  the  sins  and  pity  for 
the  sorrows  of  our  human  lot. 

And  it  is  these  virtues,  shown  alike  in  his  life  and  in  his 
song,  that  have  so  endeared  his  verse  to  all  who  know  our 
English  tongue. 

No  poet,  I  often  think,  has  so  enviable  a  fame  as  he. 
The  verses  dear  alike  to  scholar  and  to  peasant,  the  verses 
that  speak  the  universal  passions  of  the  heart,  and  spring  un- 
bidden to  the  lips  of  all  men  in  hours  of  sadness  and  in 
moments  of  the  wildest  mirth;  the  verses  that  are  part  of 
the  household  song  of  a  race,  sung  by  thousands  who  have 
not  even  learned  to  read  them:  such  verses  as  these  Robert 
Burns  has  written.  And  who  else  has  written  such  ?  Let  us 
think  of  him  gratefully;  whatever  his  failings,  he  was  the 
most  human  of  poets: 


266  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Through  busiest  street  and  loneliest  glen 

Are  felt  the  flashes  of  his  pen ; 

He  rules  'mid  winter  snows,  and  when 

Bees  fill  their  hives; 
Deep  in  the  general  heart  of  men 

His  power  survives. 


JOHN  RUSKIN 

THE  last  of  the  great  generation  of  English  men  of 
letters  who  brightened  the  mid-nineteenth  century  is 
gone.1  John  Ruskin  is  dead.  He  outlived  all  his 
eminent  contemporaries  in  literature, — Carlyle,  Arnold, 
Browning,  Tennyson, — he  outlived  himself.  For  it  was 
Ruskin's  hard  fortune  to  see  the  decline  of  his  own  influence 
and  to  know  that  the  writings  of  his  later  years,  on  which 
he  himself  laid  most  emphasis,  were  received  by  the  public 
with  indifference  or  sometimes  with  derision.  He  finished 
his  work  in  discouragement  more  than  ten  years  ago;  his 
power  began  to  decline,  and  he  passed  the  last  decade  of 
life  in  pathetic  silence  and  seclusion,  slowly  forgetting  a 
world  that  seemed  already  to  have  forgotten  him.  But 
it  is  a  matter  of  frequent  observation  that  a  great  reputa- 
tion gained  during  one  generation  is  liable  to  temporary 
decline  during  the  next.  Public  opinion  and  standards  of 
taste  slowly  change ;  or  men  become  used  to  the  novel  powers 
that  surprised  and  charmed  at  first,  and  their  attention  is 
withdrawn  to  new  aspirants  for  literary  honors.  After  a 
time,  however,  these  smaller  men  drop  out  of  notice,  while 
the  true  proportions  of  the  great  man's  work  grow  more 
evident;  a  second  and  juster  fame  is  accorded  him,  and  he 
takes  his  place  as  a  classic.  So  will  it  be,  we  are  assured, 
with  Mr.  Ruskin.  When  the  twentieth  century  shall  have 
made  up  its  verdict  on  the  nineteenth,  he  will  be  accounted 
not  as  merely  a  brilliant  erratic  genius,  but  as  one  of  the 
wisest  teachers  of  his  age  and  a  master  of  English  unsur- 
passed in  any  age. 

The  latter  title  to  fame  may  be  considered  as  already 
established.     Even  those  who  reject  Ruskin's  teachings  ad- 

'This    p«per    was    publiihrd    as    a    commemorative    essay    at    the    time    of 
Ruikin'i  death.     See   Prefatory   Note,  p.   xi.      [L.   B.   G.] 

267 


268  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

mit  the  wonderful  charm  of  his  style.  His  only  rival  for  the 
foremost  place  as  master  of  English  prose  in  the  nineteenth 
century  is  Thomas  Carlyle.  The  manner  of  the  two  men  was 
indeed  very  different.  Carlyle  wrote  always  with  tremendous 
difficulty — language,  as  it  were,  torn  out  of  him  in  an  agony; 
and  it  seems  still  to  bear  the  marks  of  those  throes  of  com- 
position. His  speech  is  rugged,  irregular,  setting  at  naught 
all  the  rules  of  the  smooth  rhetorician;  but  no  more  valorous, 
hard-hitting  English  was  ever  written,  and  some  of  his  best 
descriptive  passages  in  The  French  Revolution  have  a  lurid, 
imaginative  vividness  almost  preternatural — like  what  we 
see  in  dreams.  Ruskin's  writing  departs  much  less  widely 
in  structure  from  conventional  standards,  and  shows  greater 
mastery  of  the  mechanics  of  the  rhetorical  art;  yet  it  is  no 
less  original  than  Carlyle's,  and  it  is  far  more  spontaneous 
and  opulent.  His  style  has  all  those  inner  qualities  which 
make  writing  noteworthy, — continuous  and  brilliant  imagi- 
nation, eager  enthusiasm,  and  a  rapidity  of  mental  move- 
ment which  gives  to  his  most  purely  descriptive  passages 
the  constant  play  and  glance  of  life.  Then  he  has  an  under- 
current of  humor,  with  a  tinge  of  sarcasm,  which  in  his  later 
writings  is  often  something  more  than  a  tinge,  but  which 
always  gives  pungency  and  piquancy  to  his  style.  Both 
Carlyle  and  Ruskin  have  often  been  charged  with  a  lack 
of  temperance;  but  the  charge  has  more  force  against 
Carlyle  than  against  Ruskin,  and  is  much  exaggerated  in 
both  cases;  for  temperance  and  chasteness  are  not  univer- 
sally virtues  of  style.  In  the  statement  of  facts,  indeed,  pre- 
cision is  always  the  first  requisite;  but  in  the  expression  of 
emotion  there  is,  strictly  speaking,  no  such  thing  as  precision. 
Nor  is  there  any  reason  why  prose  writing  should  keep  a 
pedestrian  pace  on  the  low  levels  of  narrative  and  ex- 
position; the  loftier  attitudes  of  emotion  are  not  above  the 
proper  path  of  prose.  But  such  impassioned  prose  cannot 
be  cool  and  measured  in  manner;  and,  while  it  will  always 
avoid  the  formal  rhythm  and  cadence  of  verse,  it  will  in- 
evitably take  on  something  of  the  charm  of  music  and  image 
which  we  commonly  associate  with  poetry. 


JOHN  RUSKIN  269 

Now,  of  this  impassioned  prose  Ruskin  was  the  greatest 
master   in   our  literature.      No   man   since  Jeremy  Taylor 
has  known  how  to  write   an  English   so   rich   in  beautiful 
imagery  or  with  such  subtle  and  varied  rhythmical  effects. 
Yet  his  writing  never  suggests  that  artful  elaboration  which 
is  inconsistent  with  earnestness.     It  is  no  such  inflated  and 
grandiose    product    as    DeQuincey's    bastard   prose-poetry. 
Ruskin's   luxuriance    is   always   spontaneous,   and   his   most 
elaborate  passages  seem  naturally  conformed  at  every  point 
to  the  flexure  of  his  thought  or  feeling.     His  style,  though 
profuse,  is  never  diffuse — which  is  a  very  different  thing;  for 
diffuseness  usually  proceeds  from  the  fact  that  the  writer 
has  but  few  ideas   and  is  trying  to  hammer  them  out  as 
thin  as  possible,  while  profuseness  comes  from  the  abun- 
dance of  illustrative  or  accessory  ideas  that  come  crowding 
thickly  about   a  central   thought   and  press   for   utterance. 
Nor  did  Ruskin's  profusion  ever  betray  him  into  careless- 
ness.    With  all  his  wealth  of  diction,  he  would  not  throw 
away  a  word, — he  would  not  use  a  word  at  random.   Indeed, 
the  most  remarkable  thing  about  his  language  is  the  com- 
bination of  exuberance  with  precision.     He  used  to  insist 
on  this  precision  of  phrase  as  one  of  the  surest  tests  of 
literary  eminence,1  and  his  own  choice  of  words  was  always 
made  with  the  greatest  nicety.     Even  in  his  most  gorgeous 
passages,  when  he  might  seem  to  be  throwing  the  reins  upon 
the  neck  of  his  rhetoric,  his  phrase  will  be  found  to  be  ex- 
quisitely fitted  to  the  fact  or  the  feeling.     If  you  try  to  say 
the  same  thing  more  simply  you  will  find  that  your  expres- 
sion is  not  only  tame  and  colorless  but  really  less  accurate. 
His  mastery  is  probably  seen  best  in  some  of  his  descrip- 
tive passages.     Description,  whether  in  prose  or  verse,  is 
usually  a  weariness.     Language  is  ill  suited  to  render  the 
charm  of  color  or  form.     But  sometimes  the  union  of  imagi- 
nation and  emotion  with  the  rarest  art  can  set  before  us  in 
words  a  scene  as  vividly  as  any  painter  can  picture  it,  and 
with  a  thrilling  spiritual  sense  o*  its  meaning  such  as  no 
painter  can  ever  give.      Ruskin's  work  is  full  of  such  pas- 

*  Sec,  for  rximplr,  Stsame  and  Lilies,  Lecture  I. 


270  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

sages.     He  had  a  minute  and  accurate  observation,  so  that 
his  description  seems  always  exactly  true.    He  had  the  keen- 
est  feeling  for  beauty  everywhere,   and  especially   for  its 
analogies  and  suggestions, — for  those  large  spiritual  truths 
of  which  beauty  was  to  him  the  outward  form  and  symbol; 
so  that  his  description,  even  in  its  loftiest  flights,  seems  never 
extravagant  or  labored,  but  only  some  expression  of  that 
emotion  which,  when  sincere,  cannot  be  exaggerated,  since 
it  is  infinite  in  nature  and  therefore  in  its  fulness  ineffable. 
How  shall  a  man  exaggerate  the  peace  of  summer  evenings 
or  the  solemnity  of  the  star-sown  midnight  sky?    But,  beside 
all  this,   Ruskin  had  in  almost  unprecedented  degree  that 
sense  of  form  which  alone  can  render  feeling  articulate.    He 
chose  his  words,  as  we  have  said,  with  the  utmost  nicety; 
but  he  knew  that  the  meaning  of  words  in  combination  is 
indefinitely  varied  and  intensified  by  their  movement  and 
music.     In  fact,  such  prose  as  Ruskin's  illustrates,  quite  as 
well  as  music  can,  all  the  effects  of  tone  and  rhythm  and 
cadence.     His  page  is  sprinkled  thick  with  alliteration,  as- 
sonance, and  all  subtle  adaptations  of  sound  to  sentiment; 
yet  the  whole  is  wrought  so  spontaneously  and  is  so  brought 
into  subservience  to  the  dominant  emotion  that  all  these  de- 
tailed felicities  of  art  are  lost  in  the  total  impression.     The 
limits  of  this  paper  will  not  permit  extended  quotation,  but 
we  may  be  allowed  a  single  passage.     It  will  show  the  deli- 
cacy of  Ruskin's  art  all  the  better  that  it  is  not  one  of  his 
purple  patches,  but  is  descriptive  of  the  most  unobtrusive 
forms  of  vegetable  life, — mosses  and  lichens.     Yet  what 
microscopic  nicety  of  observation  and  felicity  of  epithet  are 
found  in  the  quotation,  what  fine  sense  of  emotional  values, 
and  what  a  solemn  grace  of  movement, — especially  in  the 
last  paragraph,  where  the  soft,  open  vowels  and  the  slow- 
paced  liquids  and  sibilants  keep  step  with  the  gentle  pathos 
of  the  thought  and  then  die  gradually  away  in  the  lingering 
cadence  of  the  closing  lines : 

Meek  creatures!  the  first  mercy  of  the  earth,  veiling  with  hushed 
softness  its  dintless  rocks;  creatures  full  of  pity,  covering  with  strange 
and  tender  honour  the  scarred  disgrace  of  ruin, — laying  quiet  finger 


JOHN  RUSKIN  271 

on  the  trembling  stones  to  teach  them  rest.  No  words  that  I  know 
of  will  say  what  these  mosses  are.  None  are  delicate  enough,  none 
perfect  enough,  none  rich  enough.  How  is  one  to  tell  of  the 
rounded  bosses  of  furred  and  beaming  green, — the  starred  divisions 
of  rubied  bloom,  fine-filmed,  as  if  the  Rock-Spirits  could  spin  porphyry 
as  we  do  glass, — the  traceries  of  intricate  silver,  and  fringes  of 
amber,  lustrous,  arborescent,  burnished  through  every  fiber  into 
fitful  brightness  and  glossy  traverses  of  silken  change,  yet  all  subdued 
and  pensive,  and  framed  for  simplest,  sweetest  offices  of  grace.  They 
will  not  be  gathered,  like  the  flowers,  for  chaplet  or  love-token  ;  but 
of  these  the  wild  bird  will  make  its  nest,  and  the  wearied  child  his 
pillow. 

And,  as  the  earth's  first  mercy,  so  they  are  its  last  gift  to  us.  When 
all  other  service  is  vain,  from  plant  and  tree,  the  soft  mosses  and  gray 
lichen  take  up  their  watch  by  the  head-stone.  The  woods,  the  blos- 
soms, the  gift-bearing  grasses,  have  done  their  part  for  a  time,  but 
these  do  service  for  ever.  Trees  for  the  builder's  yard,  flowers  for 
the  bride's  chamber,  corn  for  the  granary,  moss  for  the  grave. 

Yet  as  in  one  sense  the  humblest,  in  another  they  are  the  n  ost 
honored  of  the  earth-children.  Unfading  as  motionless,  the  worm 
frets  them  not,  and  the  autumn  wastes  not.  Strong  in  lowliness, 
they  neither  blanch  in  heat  nor  pine  in  frost.  To  them,  slow- 
fingered,  constant-hearted,  is  entrusted  the  weaving  of  the  dark, 
eternal  tapestries  of  the  hills;  to  them,  slow-pencilled,  iris-dyed,  the 
tender  framing  of  their  endless  imagery.  Sharing  the  stillness  of  the 
unimpassioned  rock,  they  share  also  its  endurance;  and  while  the 
winds  of  departing  spring  scatter  the  white  hawthorn  blossom  like 
drifted  snow,  and  summer  dims  on  the  parched  meadow  the  drooping 
of  its  cowslip-gold, — far  above,  among  the  mountains,  the  silver 
lichen-spots  rest,  starlike,  on  the  stone;  and  the  gathering  orange 
stain  upon  the  edge  of  yonder  western  peak  reflects  the  sunsets  of  a 
thousand  years.1 

Ruskin's  manner  changed,  about  1860,  with  his  change 
of  subject.  It  grew  more  simple,  direct,  and,  in  his  latest 
writings,  colloquial.  To  the  last,  indeed,  he  retained  his 
power  of  lavishly  beautiful  description,  as  passages  in  the 
Prceterita  will  show;  but  he  was  used  to  speak  disparagingly 
of  that  kind  of  writing,  and  seemed  vexed  that  the  public 
should  any  longer  care  for  it  while  they  ret  used  to  listen  to 
weightier  matters.  When  he  revised  the  second  volume  ol 
Modern  Painters,  in  18X2,  he  ruthlessly  cut  away  all  the  de- 

*  Modern  Painters,  Vol.  V,  Part  VI,  Chap.  X. 


272  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

scriptive  portions  of  the  book,  leaving  only  that  part  which 
contained  his  theory  of  beauty.  But  if  in  his  later  style  there 
is  less  luxuriance  of  imagery,  there  is  the  same  glow  of  feel- 
ing, the  same  charm  of  movement  and  music.  The  Unto  this 
Last  (1862),  which  marks  the  turning  point  in  his  career,  is 
a  treatise  on  economics,  compact,  closely  reasoned,  without  a 
line  of  mere  rhetoric,  and  yet  filled  with  restrained  energy 
and  moving  with  a  noble  rhythm  that  recalls  the  best  pas- 
sages of  Scripture.  The  Crown  of  Wild  Olive,  four  years 
later, — which  Ruskin  himself  was  inclined  to  call  his  best 
book, — while  it  is  chaste  in  manner,  is  one  of  the  best  speci- 
mens of  genuine  eloquence,  that  is,  of  impassioned  appeal, 
in  nineteenth  century  literature.  It  may  be  admitted  that, 
at  least  in  his  later  years,  his  zeal  often  became  intemperate. 
The  preacher  got  the  better  of  the  artist,  and  his  style  lost 
the  balance  and  self-possession  that  mark  work  we  call 
classic.  To  him  the  world  verily  seemed  slipping  into  con- 
tented or  scornful  forgetfulness  of  the  things  that  make  for 
righteousness  and  peace;  and  he  may  well  be  forgiven  if 
his  voice  sometimes  rose  into  despairing  remonstrance  or 
denunciation.  But  it  never  rings  hollow.  Even  in  the  most 
extravagant  passages  of  the  Fors  Clavigera  we  never  catch 
the  note  of  rhetorical  resonance.  His  opinions  may  be 
wrong;  his  fears  may  be  groundless;  his  condemnation  may 
be  unjust:  but  he  is  as  sincere  as  Jeremiah.  Such  intense 
moral  earnestness,  joined  with  such  supreme  command  of 
the  literary  art,  would  suffice  to  keep  alive  the  writing  of 
any  man,  even  if  the  ideas  underneath  it  were  fundamentally 
mistaken — witness  the  case  of  Shelley.  But  the  leading 
ideas  of  Ruskin  are  not  mistakes.  In  reality  he  has  been 
one  of  the  great  teachers  of  the  last  generation. 

Up  to  i860  all  of  Ruskin's  writing  was  concerned  more 
or  less  directly  with  the  two  arts  of  painting  and  architec- 
ture. It  is  the  period  of  the  Modern  Painters  (1843- 
1860),  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  (1849),  and  The 
Stones  of  Venice  (1851-1853).  These  three  books  awak- 
ened general  interest  in  the  art  of  northern  Italy,  so  that  for 
half  a  century  past  the  English-speaking  traveler  has  been 


JOHN  RUSKIN  273 

trying — bften,  it  must  be  confessed,  with  grievous  effort — 
to  see  things  through  Ruskin's  spectacles.  He  did  more 
than  any  other  one  man  to  secure  sincere  and  intelligent  ad- 
miration for  several  early  Italian  painters  hardly  known  in 
England  before, — Giotto,  Fra  Angelico,  Botticelli,  Car- 
paccio.  Yet  the  permanent  value  of  these  books  as  contri- 
butions to  either  the  theory,  the  history,  or  the  criticism  of 
art  is  doubtful.  The  first  was  undertaken  in  defense 
of  Turner,  the  other  two  in  defense  of  a  theory;  and  all 
three  were  written  in  the  temper  of  the  advocate  rather  than 
in  the  temper  of  the  student.  Ruskin  is  never  dispassionate. 
His  youthful  enthusiasm  is  captivating,  but  his  opinions  are 
sometimes  of  the  high  a  priori  sort,  and  depend  for  their 
proof  mostly  on  a  splendid  confidence  of  statement.  He  is 
prone  to  large  generalization  on  the  basis  of  his  own  tastes, 
and  sometimes  mistakes  a  poetic  fancy  for  an  eternal  truth. 
In  particular,  his  disposition  to  measure  art  by  moral  stand- 
ards— on  which,  to  be  sure,  the  value  of  all  his  work  largely 
depends — often  warps  his  judgment;  and  even  those  of  us 
most  in  sympathy  with  his  principles  must  admit  that  his 
ethics  and  aesthetics  now  and  then  get  oddly  mixed.  More- 
over, his  appreciation  is  limited;  there  are  fields  of  art — 
Greek  art,  for  example — for  which  he  has  very  inadequate 
feeling.  Painters  and  architects  will  tell  you  that  he  is  ro- 
mantic, capricious,  antiquarian;  that  he  gives  them  little  aid 
in  adapting  a  vital  and  progressive  art  to  the  needs  of 
to-day. 

All  this  is  doubtless  true.  But  Ruskin  was  not  a  painter 
or  an  architect;  he  was  not,  we  think,  primarily  a  critic  of 
those  arts.  He  was  a  man  of  letters.  His  writing,  like  all 
literature,  was  addressed  not  to  the  trained  intellect  of  a 
class,  but  to  the  larger  interests  of  men.  It  will  be  measured 
not  by  its  technical  accuracy,  but  by  the  volume  of  perennial 
truth  and  emotion  it  embodies.  Now  the  great  service  of 
Ruskin  to  the  world  in  these  early  volumes  may  be  summed 
up  in  the  statement  that  he  taught  us,  more  impressively 
than  any  other  writer  of  the  generation,  the  spiritual  value 
of  material  things.     There  are  three  ways,  and  only  three, 


274  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

in  which  we  may  regard  any  outward  thing — say,  a  tree : 
first,  the  practical  or  material  way,  as  so  much  timber,  or 
fuel,  or  fruit;  second,  the  intellectual  or  scientific  way,  as 
an  organism  with  laws  of  structure  and  growth  to  be 
studied;  third,  the  ethical  or  moral  way,  as  an  immediate 
cause  of  joy,  a  thing  of  beauty.  The  third,  of  course,  is 
Ruskin's  way.  It  was  the  work  of  a  great  part  of  his  life 
to  show  that  this  point  of  view  is  as  natural  as  either  of  the 
other  two,  and  far  more  important.  For  all  material  uses 
are  only  means.  What  we  call  useful  things  seem  merely 
to  prolong  life;  but  what  is  life  itself  for?  Beauty,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  an  end  in  itself.  The  highest  and  most  essen- 
tial office,  therefore,  of  all  material  things  is  to  minister  to 
our  sense  of  beauty;  that  is  what  they  are  for.  The  end 
of  the  tree  is  not  its  seed,  which  can  only  reproduce  its  life 
or  prolong  ours,  but  its  flower  and  its  leaf.  Yet  it  is  not 
easy  to  persuade  men  of  this.  In  truth,  most  of  us  cannot 
habitually  think  so.  Beauty  for  us  is  a  pleasing  accident, 
the  ornament  or  life,  but  no  part  of  its  object.  The  outer 
world,  we  say,  is  stuff  for  use,  to  be  wrought  into  food,  or 
raiment,  or  shelter.  Perhaps  the  constant  struggle  for  ex- 
istence makes  it  inevitable  that  this  should  be  our  mode  of 
thought,  and  more  inevitable  as  the  struggle  grows  more 
desperate;  so,  at  all  events,  it  is.  We  purchase  what  we 
call  convenience  and  utility  with  hardly  a  thought  of  their 
cost  in  beauty.  Our  traffic  and  manufactures  may  excoriate 
the  landscape,  blacken  the  skies,  and  pollute  the  streams; 
but  if  any  man  protest  we  brand  him  as  a  sentimentalist. 
Nor  is  it  only  the  ruder  mass  of  men  that  hold  beauty  cheap 
in  any  computation  of  the  goods  of  life.  Men  of  science 
engaged  in  study  of  the  laws  of  nature,  men  who  would 
scorn  to  estimate  things  by  gross  material  values,  have  a 
superior  disregard  for  what  they  deem  mere  aesthetics. 
Truth,  they  say, — meaning  by  truth  facts  of  relation  and 
succession  among  phenomena, — is  higher  than  beauty;  for- 
getting that  one  class  of  phenomena,  as  truly  facts  of  ob- 
servation as  any  other,  has  a  unique  power  upon  our  spir- 
itual nature  which  puts  them  above  other  facts.     "Beauty 


JOHN  RUSKIN  275 

is  truth,"  as  Keats  said,  and  it  is  a  higher  than  scientific 
truth.  It  was  the  work  of  Ruskin  not  only  to  protest  with 
impassioned  eloquence  against  the  perversion  of  view  which 
ranks  the  means  above  the  ends  of  life,  but  so  to  open  the 
eyes  and  touch  the  hearts  of  men  that  they  might  estimate 
at  its  true  worth  the  beauty  of  the  world. 

This    he    did    partly   by    the    marvelous    vividness   and 
fidelity  of  his  descriptions,  of  which  we  have  already  spoken. 
The  Modern  Painters  was  designed  to  prove  the  truth  of 
Turner's  painting,  and  to  this  end  Ruskin  was  led  to  the 
careful  study  of  all  those  natural  forms  which  Turner  had 
depicted.     This  determined  his  method.     Nature,  of  course, 
is  the  frequent  theme  of  modern  poetry;  but  the  poets  do 
not  describe.     They  rather  suggest,   without  detail,   some 
aspects  of  the  object  in  which  its  emotional  power  resides. 
The  characteristic  of  Ruskin's  writing,  on  the  other  hand, 
is   the   union   of  intense   emotions   with   minute   descriptive 
detail.     He  feels  like  a  poet;  he  observes  like  a  naturalist. 
And  this  minute  observation  ranges  over  almost  the  whole 
vast  spectacle  of  nature,   from  the  tumult  of  storm  about 
the  white  summits  of  the  Alps  to  the  veinings  of  a  leaf  in 
the  wayside  hedge.     We  do  not  know  which  to  admire  the 
more,  the  somber  majesty  of  such  a  picture  as  that  of  the 
mountains  piled  above  Martigny,1  or  the  delicate  grace  of 
the   soldanella  -    in    Swiss    meadows   breaking  through    the 
melting  snows  of  May.     No  other  book  records  so  many 
visible  phenomena  of  beauty  or  grandeur — the  clouds  and 
the  sky;  the  sternness  of  mountain  and  the  softness  of  val- 
ley; waters  as  they  hurry  or  linger  in  rivers,   and  as  they 
toss  in  the  waves  of  the  sea ;  the  lone  pine  tree  on  the  Alpine 
crag  visited  only  by  the  winds  and  stars,  and  the  gadding 
vine  wreathed  above  the  lowland  peasant's  door — all  shown 
us  with  a  beauty  and  a  precision  unfelt  before. 

But  the  deepest  power  of  all  Ruskin's  writing  on  nature 
or  on  art  proceeds  from  his  feeling  of  the  significance  of 
beauty.      Beauty,   as   Ruskin  conceives  it,   is  an  appeal  not 

1  Modern  Painters,  Part  V,  Chap.  XIX. 
*lbid.,  Part  III,  Chap.  XII. 


276  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

to  our  sensuous,  or  our  intellectual,  but  to  our  moral,  nature. 
An  object  is  beautiful  not  because  it  gives  us  certain  sense- 
impressions  of  form  and  color, — which  are  presumably  the 
same  in  the  lower  animals  as  in  us, — or  because  of  pleasur- 
able experiences  personal  or  inherited  which  are  bound  up 
with  it,  but  because  it  directly  suggests  ultimate  moral  quali- 
ties to  be  found  in  perfection  only  in  divine  nature.  Beauty 
thus  becomes  a  typical  language,  of  which  the  symbols  are 
sense-impressions,  but  the  meaning  is  read  off  by  our  moral 
perceptions.  The  first  half  of  the  second  volume  of  the 
Modern  Painters — the  only  volume  thought  by  Ruskin 
worthy  of  preservation — is  devoted  to  an  extended  exposi- 
tion of  this  theory.  A  summary  statement  of  it,  in  the  com- 
pass of  a  single  sentence,  may  be  cited  from  the  Stones  of 
Venice:  "I  have  long  believed  that  in  whatever  has  been 
made  by  the  Deity  externally  delightful  to  the  human  sense 
of  beauty  there  is  some  type  of  God's  nature  or  of  God's 
laws."  Certain  combinations  of  form  and  color,  for  ex-, 
ample,  are  beautiful  because  they  suggest  Infinity,  or  the 
divine  incomprehensibility, — as  the  line  of  a  high  horizon 
defined  against  a  bare  sky,  "the  level  twilight  behind  purple 
hills,  or  the  scarlet  edge  of  dawn  over  the  dark  sea,"  or 
any  effects  of  calm,  luminous  distance.  Other  material 
forms  suggest  repose,  or  the  divine  permanence ;  still  others, 
symmetry,  or  the  divine  justice.  Doubtless  this  theory 
would  not  be  accepted  by  any  modern  psychologist  as  a  sci- 
entific explanation  of  the  genesis  and  nature  of  our  sense  of 
beauty.  It  explains  the  earlier  notion  by  the  later,  the 
simpler  by  the  more  complex.  Yet  our  feeling  of  an  analogy 
between  material  and  moral  qualities,  on  which  the  theory 
is  based,  is  matter  of  universal  experience  and  imbedded  in 
our  common  forms  of  speech.  The  emotions  we  feel  in 
the  presence  of  a  beautiful  object  seem  always  largely  moral, 
and  in  our  endeavor  to  express  such  emotion  by  describing 
its  cause  we  instinctively  apply  to  the  object  not  sensuous  but 
moral  epithets;  we  call  it  not  red,  or  gray,  or  long,  or 
rounded,  but  quiet,  peaceful,  gracious,  gentle.  And  the 
more  profound  or  intense  that  complex  emotion  which  we 


JOHN  RUSKIN  277 

call  the  sense  of  beauty,  the  more  largely  will  it  be  found 
to  be  made  up  of  moral  elements. 

But  whatever  the  philosophic  value  of  such  a  theory  as 
this,  it  is  evident  that  to  a  man  like  Ruskin,  of  deep  religious 
sensibilities,  prone  to  see  in  all  the  powers  and  aptitudes 
of  our  nature  proof  of  a  divine  purpose,  it  would  give  a 
peculiar  intensity  and  seriousness  to  the  charm  of  the  ex- 
ternal world.  To  him  beauty  is  not  merely  a  delightful 
but  a  holy  thing, — a  revelation  of  the  nature  of  the  Infinite, 
gracious  as  his  love,  awful  as  his  law.  This  is  the  secret  of 
the  strange  power  of  much  of  his  writing.  It  is  suffused 
with  an  emotion  hardly  found  before  in  English  prose. 
Beauty  had,  indeed,  often  reminded  pious  writers  of  the 
divine  benevolence,  but  only  because,  like  our  appetites,  it 
ministers  to  our  physical  pleasure;  there  is  no  thought  of 
its  apocalyptic  character.  But  it  is  impossible  to  read  pas- 
sages like  that  quoted  above  without  realizing  that  the 
beauty  of  the  world  means  something  more  than  the  mere 
sensuous  thrill  which  flatters  eye  or  ear. 

But  it  is  not  merely  in  Ruskin's  passages  of  natural  de- 
scription that  this  conviction  of  the  moral  import  of  beauty 
is  felt;  it  is  this  which  gives  such  high  ethical  value  to  all  his 
writing  upon  art.  Art  may  be  briefly  defined  as  the  attempt 
of  the  artist  to  reproduce  in  another  the  emotion  he  himself 
has  felt  in  the  presence  of  beauty.  If  he  be  painter  or 
sculptor,  he  gives  permanence  to  combinations  of  form  and 
color  that  are  transient,  and  so  immortalizes  the  vision  of 
his  best  moments.  If  he  be  man  of  letters,  unable  to  repro- 
duce in  language  sensible  beauty  save  only  in  imperfect  way 
through  memory  and  imagination,  he  will  endeavor  to  re- 
produce the  suggestions  of  the  object  and  to  interpret  its 
spiritual  meanings.  But  in  either  case  the  value  of  the 
product  will,  in  the  last  analysis,  be  measured  by  the  rank 
and  intensity  of  the  moral  emotions  it  awakens.  To  this 
ethical  standard  Ruskin  brings  every  work  of  art.  He  had 
no  patience  with  the  modern  cry  of  "art  for  art's  sake." 
He  cared  little — perhaps  too  little — for  mere  technique. 
He  rails  at  the  waste  of  time  and  skill  over  marvelous  effects 


278  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

of  light  on  a  bunch  of  carrots  or  the  inside  of  a  brass  kettle ; 
he  did  not  hesitate  to  arraign  the  most  vaunted  specimens 
of  Italian  art  for  their  lack  of  truth  in  imagination  and 
sincerity  of  feeling.  Perhaps  he  carried  this  method  of 
judgment  too  far;  perhaps  his  opinions  were  sometimes 
fantastic  and  his  verdicts  perverse,  though  we,  for  one,  con- 
fess to  a  delight  in  his  strictures  even  of  the  "kicking  grace- 
fulness" of  Raphael's  "Transfiguration" ;  but  it  is  certain 
that  this  constant  insistence  on  ethical  standards  gives  a 
value  to  his  work  that  more  narrowly  critical  writing  could 
never  have. 

It  is  not  easy,  indeed,  to  overestimate  the  services  of 
Ruskin  to  the  development  of  English  art.  He  began  to 
write  at  a  time  when  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  there 
was  no  English  art.  All  the  best  English  painters  since 
his  day, — Hunt,  Millais,  Leighton,  Rossetti,  Burne  Jones, — 
though  in  no  strict  sense  his  disciples,  and  often  differing 
with  him  violently,  nevertheless  have  owed  their  inspiration 
largely  to  the  romantic  feeling,  the  fertility  of  suggestion, 
and  the  nobility  of  ideal  in  the  writing  of  Ruskin.  He  did 
not  found  a  school,  but  he  did  more  than  any  one  else  to  start 
a  movement.  The  history  of  English  art  for  the  last  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century  without  mention  of  John  Ruskin 
would  be  the  play  of  Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left  out.  Not 
less  potent  has  been  his  influence  in  a  general  quickening  of 
the  popular  artistic  sense.  When  the  first  volume  of 
Modern  Painters  appeared,  public  taste  in  England  was  at 
its  nadir.  It  was  the  era  of  ugliness  in  architecture,  in 
household  decorations,  in  all  the  surroundings  of  daily  life. 
We  are  still  a  great  way  from  that  simplicity  and  elegance 
which  a  true  ideal  of  beauty  in  the  arts  of  household  use 
demands,  but  we  have  made  a  great  advance  since  1850. 

But  the  chief  value  of  Ruskin's  writing  throughout  this 
period  of  his  life — as,  indeed,  through  all  his  life — is 
ethical.  Like  all  great  literature,  it  is  concerned  with  those 
broad  truths  of  human  nature  on  which  the  laws  both  of 
art  and  of  morals  are  based.  Thus,  whatever  his  theme, 
before  he  is  through  with  it  he  is  sure  to  turn  out  a  moralist. 


JOHN  RUSKIN  279 

Nothing  he  has  done  is  of  more  importance  than  this  con- 
stant emphasis  of  the  relation  between  conduct  and  artistic 
feeling,  and  the  consequent  duty  of  cultivating  good  taste. 
To  many  worthy,  pious  folk,  especially  in  the  evangelical 
section  of  society,  with  which  Ruskin  by  birth  and  education 
was  most  closely  connected,  this  must  have  seemed  a  fan- 
tastic and  dangerous  doctrine.  Material  beauty  in  any  of 
its  forms  was  most  naturally  deemed  by  them  a  snare,  and 
overmuch  admiration  of  it  a  proof  of  worldliness,  a  pam- 
pering of  the  carnal  man.  And  it  is  common  for  all  of  us 
to  speak  slightingly  of  "matters  of  taste"  as  having  nothing 
to  do  with  moral  choice.  Nor  is  this  tendency  without 
some  reason.  In  fact,  any  over-ardency  of  admiration  for 
sensible  loveliness  unaccompanied  by  a  feeling  for  its  spir- 
itual meanings  does  easily  pass  into  sentimentalism  or  ani- 
malism; even  in  the  finest  natures,  like  that  of  Keats,  for 
instance,  it  is  justly  thought  an  indication  of  some  lack  of 
moral  symmetry;  while  as  for  taste,  the  raptures  of  the 
aesthetes,  for  a  little  while  in  the  seventies,  over  their  bal- 
lades and  blue  china  provoked  the  ridicule  of  all  sensible 
people,  and  were  fitly  laughed  away  in  Patience.  But  these 
perversities  or  follies  are  not  to  be  charged  against  the 
teaching  of  Ruskin.  If  taste  be  merely  the  caprice  of  per- 
sonal choice  between  trivial  things — a  nice  judgment  in  bric- 
a-brac — then,  indeed,  it  is  no  matter  to  make  a  gospel  of 
But  if,  on  the  contrary,  taste  be  a  wise  choice  among  the 
pleasures  of  life,  the  ability  to  perceive  and  enjoy  what  was 
divinely  intended  for  our  enjoyment,  then  the  difference  be- 
tween good  taste  and  bad  taste  goes  to  the  very  roots  of  our 
nature.  And  it  does.  Ruskin  is  quite  right  when  he  says, 
"The  first,  last,  and  closest  trial  question  to  any  living  crea- 
ture is,  'What  do  you  like?'  Tell  me  what  you  like,  and 
I'll  tell  you  what  you  are."  It  is  not  so  much  what  a  man 
does  that  reveals  his  character — his  doing  may  be  deter- 
mined by  convention  or  constraint;  nor  yet  what  he  believes 
— his  belief  may  be  mostly  matter  of  accident  or  inherit- 
ance; it  is  what  he  enjoys.  This  decides  his  ideals  and  his 
desires.     What,  then,  can  be  more  clearly  a  duty  than  to  re- 


280  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

fine  and  elevate  the  tastes  of  men,  to  teach  them  to  love 
the  beauty  God  made  to  be  loved?  And  if  that  be,  as  Rus- 
kin  insists,  always  somehow  the  type  and  suggestion  of  in- 
finite virtue,  the  love  of  it  will  surely  cleanse  our  affections 
and  lift  our  thoughts.  Nay,  it  will  always  be  true  that  any 
perfect  vision  of  it  is  possible  only  to  the  pure  in  heart  who 
see  God : 

You  may  answer  or  think,  "Is  the  liking  for  outside  ornaments, — 
for  pictures,  or  statues,  or  furniture,  or  architecture,  a  moral  qual- 
ity?" Yes,  most  surely,  if  a  rightly  set  liking.  Taste  for  any  pic- 
tures or  statues  is  not  a  moral  quality,  but  taste  for  good  ones  is.  .  .  . 
That  is  an  entirely  moral  quality — it  is  the  taste  of  the  angels.  And 
all  delight  in  fine  art,  and  all  love  of  it,  resolve  themselves  into 
simple  love  of  that  which  deserves  love.  That  deserving  is  the 
quality  we  call  loveliness — (we  ought  to  have  an  opposite  word, 
"hateliness,"  to  be  said  of  the  things  which  deserve  to  be  hated)  ; 
and  it  is  not  an  indifferent  nor  optional  thing  whether  we  love  this 
or  that;  but  it  is  just  the  vital  function  of  all  our  being.  What  we 
like  determines  what  we  are,  and  is  the  sign  of  what  we  are;  and  to 
teach  taste  is  inevitably  to  form  character. 

It  is  this  deep  sense  of  ethical  values  that  gives  to  all 
Ruskin's  writing  on  art  at  once  its  breadth  of  interest  and 
its  impassioned  earnestness.  No  other  modern  English 
preacher  of  righteousness  is  half  so  eloquent,  or  has  half 
his  power  to  arouse  and  inspire.  He  brings  to  the  discus- 
sion of  the  most  technical  subjects  a  keen  analysis  of  moral 
motive,  a  freshness  of  thought  on  the  highest  concerns  of 
life,  and  an  ardor  of  aspiration  after  whatsoever  things  are 
lovely  and  of  good  report,  such  as  will  be  sought  in  vain  in 
any  other  literary  prose  of  the  nineteenth  century.  And  it 
was  because  he  came  to  believe  with  ever-deepening  convic- 
tion that  the  social  and  economic  conditions  of  England  were 
making  it  impossible  any  longer  for  the  great  majority  of 
men  to  have  any  enjoyment  in  their  work  or  any  share  in 
the  real  goods  of  life  that,  at  the  summit  of  his  career,  he 
turned  away  from  art,  gave  up  his  fame  and  fortune,  put  by 
his  plans,  exchanged  admiration  for  obloquy,  and  for  the 
space  of  twenty  years  ceased  not  to  exhort,  to  warn,  to  de- 


JOHN  RUSKIN  281 

nounce,  till  he  deemed  his  mission  hopeless  and  sank,  into 
the  long,  mute  twilight  that  preceded  his  death. 

Had  Ruskin  died  early  in  i860  he  would  be  remembered 
to-day  as  the  greatest  master  of  English  prose  in  the  cen- 
tury, any  extravagances  quite  forgotten  in  the  breadth  of 
his  knowledge  and  the  marvelous  beauty  of  his  style.  But 
in  that  year  '  appeared  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine  the  Unto 
This  Last:  Four  Essays  on  the  First  Principles  of  Political 
Economy,  followed  in  the  next  decade  by  a  series  of  books 
and  addresses  attacking  in  very  outspoken  fashion  accepted 
economic  theory  and  social  practice  based  on  it.  Originality 
and  boldness  had  been  all  very  well  in  the  criticism  of  art; 
to  carry  them  into  the  field  of  practical  business — that  was 
a  different  matter.  The  man  who  had  just  succeeded  in 
winning  the  applause  of  the  British  public  now  found  him- 
self decried  as  a  visionary  whose  benevolent  but  mischievous 
fanaticism  would  undermine  the  foundations  of  society.  His 
enthusiasm  for  what  seemed  sweeping  social  heresies  was 
accounted  proof  of  radical  unsoundness  of  judgment;  and 
some  of  his  former  admirers  began  to  doubt  the  wisdom 
even  of  his  earlier  work.  To  this  day  he  is  thought  of  by 
many  people  as  an  aesthetic  sentimentalist  who  wrote  some 
very  beautiful  things,  but  who  in  his  late  years  worked  him-* 
self  into  a  state  of  mind  because  steam-engines  make  a  hid- 
eous noise  and  factories  litter  the  landscape  with  their  refuse 
or  darken  the  sky  with  their  smoke. 

But  aesthetic  sentimentalism  does  not  inspire  such  self- 
forgetful  effort  as  filled  the  last  years  of  Ruskin's  active  life; 
nor  can  aesthetic  sentimentalism  teach  such  profound  and 
impassioned  truths  of  the  relation  of  man  to  his  fellows  and 
his  God  as  fill  the  pages  of  Ruskin's  later  books.  And, 
whatever  their  lack  of  philosophic  system,  their  occasional 
false  emphasis  or  visionary  suggestion,  these  books  contain 
a  message  which  the  next  age  will  have  to  heed — nay,  which 
the  present  age  is  already  beginning  to  heed.     Whoever  in 

1  The  two  Manchester  lectures  on  the  "Political  Economy  of  Art" — 
afterward  reprinted  under  the  title,  A  Joy  Fotfver — were  first  published  in 
1857;  but  they  rather  presage  Ruskin's  economic  opinions  than  give  a  sys- 
tematic statement  of  them. 


282  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

1950  looks  over  the  literature  of  a  century  will  see  that  Unto 
This  Last,  like  Carlyle's  Sartor  Resartus,  is  one  of  the  books 
that  mark  an  era,  for  it  announced  the  rise  of  a  new  social 
spirit.  It  was  not  love  of  art  that  wrote  these  later  books, 
it  was  love  of  man.  It  was,  indeed,  Ruskin's  study  of  art 
that  led  directly  to  his  attack  upon  social  conditions.  The 
result  of  all  that  study  had  been  to  teach  him  that  a  great 
art  is  possible  only  in  a  healthy  society;  that  the  condition 
of  national  taste  depends  largely  on  the  condition  of  na- 
tional morals, — The  Stones  of  Venice  had  been  written  ex- 
pressly to  prove  these  propositions.  The  converse,  then, 
must  be  true.  There  must  be  something  radically  wrong 
in  a  state  of  society  which  made  great  art  impossible,  in 
an  economic  and  social  system  that  degraded  the  tastes  of 
men  at  once  by  shutting  them  off  from  many  of  the  best 
pleasures  of  life  and  by  making  them  blind  to  the  few  that 
were  left.  And  this,  Ruskin  thought,  was  just  what  was 
doing  in  the  England  of  his  day.  His  grief  and  indignation 
over  some  of  the  more  remote  and  indirect  results  of  the 
industrial  system  were  not,  as  is  so  often  charged,  proofs 
of  an  idle  sentimentalism.  If  beauty  be  of  real  moral  value, 
it  could  not  be  a  matter  of  merely  sentimental  regret  that 
the  fairest  region  in  England  was  ravaged  of  beauty  in  sky 
and  stream  and  earth  till  it  became  familiarly  known  as  the 
"Black  Country."  Still  less  could  it  be  a  matter  of  indif- 
ference that  half  the  people  of  England  were  huddled 
in  the  squalor  and  ugliness  of  large  towns.  Or,  again,  con- 
sider Ruskin's  much-derided  protests  against  machinery. 
One  of  the  chief  joys  of  all  men  ought  certainly  to  be  in 
their  work,  the  joy  in  what  they  make  or  do;  art,  in  fact, 
is  the  result  of  that  motive  in  its  purest  form — something 
made  solely  for  the  delight  of  making,  without  thought  of 
future.  If  a  man  take  no  joy  in  his  work,  either*in  the 
process  itself  or  in  his  foresight  of  the  finished  product, 
then  his  work,  no  matter  how  high  his  wage,  is  drudgery. 
Some  such  drudgery  doubtless  there  must  be ;  but  the  man 
all  of  whose  work  is  of  that  sort  is  a  slave.  Now  to  such 
slavery,  Ruskin  asserted,  the  perfection  of  machinery  and 


JOHN  RUSKIN  283 

consequent  minute  subdivision  of  labor  had  reduced  vast 
numbers  of  English  workmen.  The  grievance  is  not  so 
much  that  the  workman  is  poorly  paid,  fed,  or  housed, — 
although  all  that  is  too  often  true, — it  is  that  he  cannot  pos- 
sibly rind  pleasure  in  his  work.  He  makes  nothing.  He 
stands  all  day  before  a  machine  almost  as  intelligent  as  him- 
self, and  repeats  endlessly  a  few  muscular  movements,  pulls 
a  lever  or  pushes  a  bar.  This  is  his  "work."  It  is  insane 
to  say  that  any  intelligent  creature  can  take  joy  of  it.  The 
man  inevitably  comes  to  think  of  his  pleasure,  therefore, 
as  something  apart  from  his  work,  incompatible  with  work; 
and  this,  in  four  cases  out  of  five,  means  moral  death.  We 
have  become  so  familiar  with  this  tendency  in  the  last  forty 
years,  and  with  its  influence  on  our  operative  class,  that  we 
regard  it  with  unconcern,  as  part  of  the  necessary  hardship 
of  life.  But  surely  it  is  not  sentimentality  to  feel  the  pity 
of  it.  Said  an  eminent  American  ecclesiastic  in  a  public  ad- 
dress the  other  day,  after  describing  the  work  he  saw  a 
young  man  doing  in  a  factory:  "No  wonder  that  at  night- 
time he  drank,  gambled,  and  fought.  He  had  to;  other- 
wise he  would  go  mad.  How  many  of  us  would  stand  this 
and  not  cry  out?  Not  one  of  us  but  would  become  a  striker, 
myself  among  the  first!"  We  may  not  agree  with  Ruskin 
that  we  had  best  give  up  most  of  our  machines  and  go  back 
to  hand  labor;  the  remedy  must  probably  lie  in  quite  another 
direction.  But  we  need  not  brand  as  fanaticism  that  pas- 
sionate humanitarianism  which  demanded  some  change  in 
an  industry  that  made  "goods"  only  by  unmaking  men,  and 
increased  what  it  called  value  only  at  cost  of  all  the  real 
wealth  of  life. 

Ruskin's  real  attack  was  directed  not  against  any 
such  incidental  or  secondary  results  of  the  modern  industrial 
system,  but  against  the  set  of  economic  principles  which  by 
common  consent  were  supposed  to  govern  most  of  the  rela- 
tions of  men.  Political  economy  is  usually  defined  as  the 
science  of  wealth;  and  by  wealth  is  meant  the  sum  of  ma- 
terial things  having  exchangeable  value.  Political  economy, 
then,  is  the  science  of  the  acquisition  and  exchange  of  ma- 


284  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

terial  things — a  purely  commercial  science.  Moreover,  it 
proceeds  on  certain  assumptions,  dignified  by  the  name  of 
"laws,"  which  exclude  moral  considerations  altogether.  It 
assumes  that,  if  I  am  buying,  I  shall  buy  as  cheaply  as  I 
can,  whether  labor  or  product;  that,  if  I  am  selling  either 
labor,  or  product,  I  shall  sell  as  dearly  as  I  can, — the  sole 
motive  in  either  case,  being  gain  in  material  things.  That  is, 
it  is  the  scientific  expression  of  some  forms  of  human  selfish- 
ness. There  may  be  no  objection  to  such  a  science  as  this, 
if  it  keep  within  its  own  sphere  and  be  recognized  as  merely 
what  it  is,  a  body  of  practical  laws  derived  from  assumed 
principles.  If  we  do  so  and  so,  such  and  such  things  will 
follow;  which  reasoning  leaves  it  quite  an  open  question 
whether  we  ought  to  do  so  and  so.  If  we  assume  that  two 
and  two  make  five,  we  can  logically  go  on  to  conclude  that 
four  and  four  make  ten;  but  the  body  of  laws  derived  from 
our  first  assumption  will  hardly  fit  the  computations  of  real 
life.  Yet,  in  practice,  it  seems  to  be  taken  for  granted  that 
the  most  important  dealings  of  men  with  each  other  in  or- 
ganized society — not  only  the  acquisition  of  wealth,  but, 
secondarily,  the  social  conditions  and  opportunities  largely 
determined  by  wealth — must  all  be  governed  by  this  science 
of  political  economy.  The  only  motive  supposed  to  be  oper- 
ative is  the  self-interest  of  the  individual ;  whatever  hardship 
or  inequality  may  result,  no  obstacle  must  be  placed  in  the 
way  of  that.  Government  exists  chiefly  to  secure  to  every 
man  his  liberty  and  his  rights;  that  is,  to  see  that  he  is  let 
alone  and  allowed  to  make  the  most  of  all  his  powers  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  We  may  not  by  superior  strength 
strangle  our  neighbor,  out  of  hate  for  him;  but  we  may  by 
superior  shrewdness  starve  him,  out  of  love  for  ourselves. 

Now,  against  this  hard  economic  theory  Ruskin  urged 
three  principal  objections.  First,  and  foremost,  he  pro- 
tested in  the  name  of  humanity  and  religion  against  this 
stolid  enthronement  of  the  "Goddess  of  Getting-on"  as  the 
only  possible  ruler  over  a  large  part  of  human  action.  No 
science  can  pretend  to  govern  the  actions  of  Christian  men 
which  is  not  a  moral  science;  yet  this  so-called  political 


JOHN  RUSKIN  285 

economy  takes  it  for  granted  that  three  fourths  of  human 
conduct  is  not  to  be  measured  by  moral  standards.  It  makes 
the  law  of  supply  and  demand  the  sole  nexus  between  social 
beings,  and  practically  excludes  ethical  motives  from  eco- 
nomic discussion.  The  pretended  laws  of  such  a  science, 
Ruskin  asserts,  are  not  laws  at  all,  nor  must  they  be  accepted 
as  rules  of  conduct.  We  shall  buy  in  the  cheapest  market? 
That  depends  on  what  makes  the  market  cheap.  We  are  at 
liberty  to  invest  our  capital  where  it  will  bring  the  highest 
rates  of  interest?  No;  not  if  such  investment  means  to  con- 
demn many  people  to  work  on  the  lowest  living  wage,  while 
we  sit  still  and  enjoy  the  fruit  of  their  labor;  to  condemn 
them,  moreover,  to  work  that  is  cheerless,  carried  on  in  de- 
basing conditions,  and  resulting  in  product  often  excessive 
and  sometimes  really  valueless.  We  must  be  allowed  free 
competition?  Certainly  not,  if  free  competition  means  that 
we  are  permitted  by  our  superior  shrewdness  to  shut  up 
every  avenue  of  advance  to  our  rivals  and  crush  all  weaker 
competitors.     Cries  Ruskin: 

You  would  be  indignant  if  you  saw  a  strong  man  walk  into  a 
theater  or  lecture  room  and,  calmly  choosing  the  best  place,  take  his 
feeble  neighbor  by  the  shoulder,  and  turn  him  out  of  it  into  the  back 
seats,  or  the  street.  You  would  be  equally  indignant  if  you  saw  a 
stout  fellow  thrust  himself  up  to  a  table  where  some  hungry  children 
were  being  fed,  and  reach  his  arm  over  their  heads  and  take  their 
bread  from  them.  But  you  are  not  the  least  indignant  if,  when  a 
man  has  stoutness  of  thought  and  swiftness  of  capacity,  and,  instead  of 
being  long-armed  only,  has  the  much  greater  gift  of  being  long-headed 
— you  think  it  perfectly  just  that  he  should  use  his  intellect  to  take  the 
bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  all  the  other  men  in  the  town  who  are 
of  the  same  trade  with  him ;  or  use  his  breadth  and  sweep  of  sight  to 
gather  some  branch  of  the  commerce  of  the  country  into  one  great 
cobweb,  of  which  he  is  himself  to  be  the  central  spider,  making  every 
thread  vibrate  with  the  points  of  his  claws,  and  commanding  every 
avenue  with  the  facets  of  his  eyes.    You  see  no  injustice  in  this.1 

Not  that  Ruskin  contemplated  any  such  thing  as  eco- 
nomic equality  among  men.  He  never  advocated  any  level- 
ing scheme   to  prevent  the   accumulation   of  wealth   in  the 

1  A  Joy  Forever,  I   117. 


286  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

hands  of  individuals.  There  must  always  be  the  rich  and 
the  poor.  In  so  far  as  these  inequalities  result  from  dif- 
ferences in  industry,  economy, — in  a  word,  from  moral  dif- 
ferences,— they  are  wholesome  examples  of  moral  law ;  they 
would  exist  in  an  ideal  state.  In  so  far  as  they  result  from 
differences  of  native  ability  or  unavoidable  circumstance, 
they  are  misfortunes  to  be  minimized  as  far  as  possible;  in 
an  ideal  state  they  would  no  longer  exist.  In  so  far  as  they 
result  from  any  form  of  the  tyranny  of  the  strong  over  the 
weak,  they  are  evidence  of  virtual  robbery,  and  in  the  actual 
state  ought  not  to  be  countenanced.  But,  under  our  present 
economic  system,  Ruskin  contends,  differences  of  fortune  are 
no  index  of  character: 

In  a  community  regulated  only  by  laws  of  demand  and  supply, 
but  protected  from  open  violence,  the  persons  who  become  rich  are, 
generally  speaking,  industrious,  resolute,  proud,  covetous,  prompt, 
methodical,  sensible,  unimaginative,  insensitive,  and  ignorant.  The 
persons  who  remain  poor  are  the  entirely  foolish,  the  entirely  wise, 
the  idle,  the  reckless,  the  humble,  the  thoughtful,  the  dull,  the 
imaginative,  the  sensitive,  the  well-informed,  the  improvident,  the 
irregularly  and  impulsively  wicked,  the  clumsy  knave,  the  open  thief, 
and  the  entirely  merciful,  just  and  godly  person.1 

Which  statement  affords  food  for  reflection. 

The  entire  lack  of  relation  between  wealth  and  moral 
character  indicated  in  this  passage  may  suggest  the  second  of 
Ruskin's  objections  to  the  economic  theory  of  his  day.  He 
would  broaden  the  range  of  economic  discussion  by  giving 
a  more  adequate  definition  of  the  word  "wealth."  Rightly 
considered,  wealth  is  the  sum  of  those  things  that  maintain 
or  enlarge  life,  intellectual  and  moral,  as  well  as  physical. 
But  most  economic  discussion  not  only  proceeds  upon  the 
assumption  of  selfish  motive,  but  it  leaves  out  altogether  the 
more  worthy  objects  of  effort.  Its  values  are  exclusively 
material,  and  even  of  material  things  it  considers  only  those 
that  can  be  individually  appropriated  and  exchanged.  The 
real  economic  value  of  anything  should  be  estimated  by  a 
comparison  of  its  power  to  maintain  life  with  its  cost  in  life. 

Unto  this  Last,  Essay  IV. 


JOHN  RUSKIN  287 

It  follows  that  we  cannot  safely  discuss  the  laws  of  increase 
in  material  value  apart  from  all  other  considerations.  The 
statement  that  a  man  may  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose 
his  own  soul  is  not  a  piece  of  pietism,  but  a  sober  economic 
truth  to  be  reckoned  with — for  that  operation  is  not  one  of 
profit.  A  wider  political  economy  must  ask  how  best  to 
attain,  preserve,  and  distribute  among  men  all  the  real  goods 
of  life.  It  will  be,  therefore,  not  merely  a  material  but  an 
ethical  science;  or,  rather,  it  will  be,  as  Ruskin  has  called 
it,  "a  system  of  conduct  and  legislation." 

This  last  word  suggests  Ruskin's  third  criticism.  Cur- 
rent economic  theory  was,  he  held,  virtually  anti-social.  It 
left  everything  in  the  power  of  the  individual.  It  not  only 
allowed  all  sorts  of  injustice  that  spring  from  superior  per- 
sonal ability,  but  it  encouraged  a  false  spirit  of  liberty,  and 
weakened  the  temper  of  obedience  upon  which  the  stability 
of  society  largely  depends.  Ruskin  was  no  democrat.  He 
was  in  favor  of  more  government  rather  than  less.  The 
function  of  government,  he  held,  is  not  limited  to  the  pro- 
tection of  the  individual  from  actual  violence.  If  the  State 
may  call  upon  every  man  to  defend  the  general  wealth,  even 
at  the  cost  of  life  itself,  then  it  must  do  all  in  its  power  to 
secure  to  every  man  his  share  in  the  general  wealth.  In  a 
word,  it  is  bound  to  do  for  the  individual  everything  it  pos- 
sibly can  do. 

These  three  objections,  variously  enforced  and  illus- 
trated throughout  his  later  writings,  are  at  the  bottom  of 
all  Ruskin's  arraignment  of  society.  And  will  most  men 
deny  that  all  three  are  well  taken?  We  may  take  offense 
at  occasional  extravagance  in  asserting  them;  we  shall  cer- 
tainly dissent  from  some  inferences  he  drew  from  them. 
No  one  thinks  we  must  travel  by  stagecoach  and  sailing 
vessel  again,  or  relinquish  in  any  wise  our  command  of 
material  energy  and  product.  Probably  no  one  thinks  all 
taking  of  interest  on  capital  is  immoral.  These  are  vagaries 
of  Ruskin's,  prompted  by  an  enthusiastic  devotion  to  his 
principles,  but  not  logically  implied  in  them.  Moreover,  it 
may  be  admitted  that  the  form  in  which  his  teaching  is  put 


288  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

is  now  and  then  over-fanciful.     We  should  hardly  look  to 
find  economic  truths  in  the  behavior  of  crystals  or  in  the 
songs  of  Shakespeare's   Tempest.    A  wide-ranging  imagina- 
tion, over-possessed  by  a  fervid  purpose,  discovers  anal- 
ogies   in    most    unlooked-for    places.      But    the    core    of 
Ruskin's  doctrine  was  sound.     It  was  an  earnest  attempt  to 
apply  the  morality  of  the  New  Testament  to  all  the  business 
of  men.     Christian  men  should  not  object  to  that.     And  if 
Ruskin's   denunciation  was  sometimes  severe,   was   it  not 
needed?    Is  it  not  needed  even  now?    What  are  the  dangers 
that  most  threaten  us  in  America  to-day — the  aggregation 
of  wealth  in  a  few  hands;  the  corrupt  influence  of  great 
moneyed  interests  upon  legislation;  the  resistless  tyranny  of 
trusts  and  combinations;  the  degradation  of  great  masses 
of  our  lowest  laborers  in  factories  and  mines;  the  disrespect 
for  law;  the  insolence  of  our  youth;  the  general  lack  of  the 
spirit  of  obedience  in  our  civilization — what  are  all  these 
but  precisely  the  threatening  dangers  pointed  out  by  Ruskin 
half    a    century    ago?      And,    on    the    other    hand,    we 
may  thankfully  note  that  in  many  ways  Ruskin's  teaching 
has  already  begun  to  bear  fruit.    The  hard  pedantry  of  the 
Manchester   school   of   economics,    supreme   then,   is   now 
generally   discredited.      We   are   finding   that   government 
has  some  other  functions  than  to  see  that  everybody  is  let 
alone.    State  and  city  have  already  begun  to  look  after  the 
health,  moral  and  intellectual,  as  well  as  physical,  of  all 
their  citizens;  to  remove  enterprises  affecting  the  common 
welfare  out  of  the  control  of  private  greed;  to  interfere 
with  the  liberty  of  the  individual,  in  behalf  of  the  general 
interest,  in  a  score  of  ways  undreamed  of  when  Ruskin  wrote. 
Most  of  all,  a  new  and  broader  social  sentiment  is  surely 
pervading  modern  thought.    It  is  no  longer  deemed  possible 
that  "an  advantageous  code  of  social  action  may  be  deter- 
mined  irrespective   of  the   influence  of   social   affections." 
That  once-dreaded  word  "Socialism,"  though  still  used  to 
cover  a  multitude  of   follies,   is  no  longer  a   red  rag  to 
frighten  all  conservative  folk.     The  favorite  study  of  the 
scholar  and  the  statesman  is  social  science,  and  social  science 


JOHN  RUSKIN  289 

is  only  the  attempt  to  throw  a  bridge  between  Christian 
ethics  and  political  economy.  The  best  thought  of  the 
world  to-day  is  being  put  upon  that  problem.  For  all  this 
we  are  largely  to  thank  John  Ruskin.  He  was  no  statesman, 
no  philosopher;  he  was  a  man  of  letters.  But  the  man  of 
letters  often  prepares  the  way  for  the  philosopher  and 
statesman.  Behind  every  great  movement  is  a  great  volume 
of  sentiment.  In  this  case  it  was  Ruskin  who  embodied  this 
social  sentiment  in  literature. 

But  Ruskin  was  not  content  to  serve  the  cause  of  hu- 
manity merely  by  sitting  in  a  library  and  writing  books. 
He  lived  the  life  of  a  missionary — teaching,  lecturing,  ex- 
horting; founding  schools,  museums,  libraries;  giving  with- 
out stint  of  his  money,  his  time,  his  treasures  of  art;  writing 
multitudes  of  private  letters  of  advice;  giving  counsel  and 
encouragement  to  all  who  sought  it;  filled  with  sympathy 
for  all  hardship,  with  indignation  for  all  injustice;  burning 
with  zeal  to  secure  for  everybody  some  share  in  the  real 
goods  of  life.  In  the  early  fifties  he  was  among  the  first 
of  a  little  band  of  social  reformers  to  set  on  foot  a  scheme 
of  education  for  English  artisans  and  establish  the  Work- 
ing Men's  College,  of  which  F.  D.  Maurice  was  president, 
and  with  which  Charles  Kingsley,  Tom  Hughes,  and  Dante 
Gabriel  Ros*setti  were  connected.  Miss  Octavia  Hill  always 
found  him  her  most  generous  helper  in  her  work  of  intel- 
ligent assistance  for  the  honest  poor  of  East  London.  He 
was  left  by  his  father  a  fortune  of  over  £160,000, — nearly 
a  million  dollars, — but  he  spent  the  whole  of  it  in  charitable 
uses.  Some  of  his  social  experiments  seemed  quixotic, 
others  trivial;  but  he  knew  that,  as  Burke  said,  if  you  want 
to  get  anywhere  you  must  start  from  where  you  are.  If  he 
set  some  Oxford  students  at  making  a  road,  it  was  probably 
because  he  thought  it  well  those  young  fellows  should  find 
out  what  manual  labor  is  like  rather  than  because  he  sup- 
posed they  would  make  a  very  good  road.  His  much- 
derided  Guild  of  St.  George  was  simply  a  voluntary  associa- 
tion of  people  willing  to  help  him,  whenever  opportunity  of- 
fered,  in  putting  some  of  his  notions  into  practice.     The 


290  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

only  pledge  of  the  Guild  is  a  simple  but  noble  resolve  which 
any  Christian  man  or  woman  ought  to  be  ready  to  make. 
But,  however  visionary  some  of  Ruskin's  plans,  we  can  find 
inspiration  in  the  example  of  the  man  who,  at  the  height 
of  his  fame,  turned  away  from  his  chosen  studies  and  gave 
up  riches  and  ambition  to  become  a  prophet  and  preacher  of 
righteousness.  He  did  not  always  prophesy  soft  things* 
He  was  sometimes  indignant  at  us,  almost  fierce ;  but  never 
in  his  own  cause.  There  is  not  the  first  trace  of  a  mean 
personal  resentment  in  his  writings  or  his  life.  It  was  much 
to  be  without  a  rival  in  the  magic  and  mastery  of  language; 
it  was  more  to  have  filled  near  two  score  volumes  with 
beauty  and  wisdom,  with  never  a  line  of  vulgarity,  or  mal- 
ice, or  irreverence ;  but  perhaps  the  historian  will  give  him 
the  highest  encomium  when  he  writes  down  John  Ruskin  as 
a  friend  of  man. 


BROWNING 

GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS 


A 


LLOW  me  to  preface  what  I  have  to  say  with  three 
or  four  brief  quotations.  The  first  shall  be  a  snatch 
of  love  song: 


All  the  breath  and  the  bloom  of  the  year  in  the  bag  of  one  bee: 
All  the  wonder  and  wealth  of  the  mine  in  the  heart  of  one  gem : 
In  the  core  of  one  pearl  all  the  shade  and  the  shine  of  the  sea: 
Breath  and  bloom,  shade  and  shine, — wonder,  wealth,  and — how 
far  above  them — 
Truth,  that's  brighter  than  gem, 
Trust,  that's  purer  than  pearl, — 
Brightest  truth,  purest  trust  in  the  universe — all  were  for  me 
In  the  kiss  of  one  girl. 

Beautiful  that,  eh?  And  what  a  lilt  in  its  music  1  Just  a 
trace  of  Swinburne,  perhaps,  in  its  alliterations  and  asso- 
nance, written,  you  would  say,  by  some  young  fellow  with 
a  remarkable  ear  for  metrical  effect  and  a  quick  eye  for 
beauty  of  sense.  Not  much  depth  doubtless,  but  the  old 
note,  ever  new,  of  young  love  and  bright  fancy. 

But  here  is  something  that  strikes   a  deeper  note,  of 
poignant  pain,  of  the  love  that  is  stronger  than  death: 

You'll  love  me  yet! — and  I  can  tarry 

Your   love's   protracted   growing: 
June  reared  that  bunch  of  flowers  you  carry, 

From  seeds  of  April's  sowing. 

I  plant  a  heartfull  now:  some  seed 

At  least  is  sure  to  strike, 
And  yield — what  you'll  not  pluck  indeed, 

Not  love,  but,  may  be,  like. 
291 


2Q2  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

You'll  look  at  least  on  love's  remains, 

A  grave's  one  violet : 
Your  look? — that  pays  a  thousand  pains. 

What's  death  ?    You'll  love  me  yet ! 

What  a  haunting  pathos;  this  surely  is  the  verse  of  maturer 
life.  Well,  the  first  verses  were  written  when  the  poet  was 
seventy-eight  years  old;  the  second,  when  he  was  twenty- 
eight.  But  in  both  alike  what  directness  and  simplicity; 
the  man  has,  you  say,  deep  feeling  in  youth  and  fresh  feel- 
ing in  age,  but  in  both  his  thought  is  pellucid  and  clear. 
Now  let  me  read  another  bit  of  what  I  suppose  to  be  love 
poetry  too : 

Room  after  room, 

I  hunt  the  house  through 

We  inhabit  together. 

Heart,  fear  nothing,  for,  heart,  thou  shalt  find  her — 

Next  time,  herself! — not  the  trouble  behind  her 

Left  in  the  curtain,  the  couch's  perfume! 

As  she  brushed  it,  the  cornice-wreath  blossomed  anew; 

Yon  looking-glass  gleamed  at  the  wave  of  her  feather. 

Yet  the  day  wears, 

And  door  succeeds  door; 

I  try  the  fresh  fortune — 

Range  the  wide  house  from  the  wing  to  the  centre. 

Still  the  same  chance!  she  goes  out  as  I  enter. 

Spend  my  whole  day  in  the  quest, — who  cares  ? 

But  't  is  twilight,  you  see, — with  such  suites  to  explore, 

Such  closets  to  search,  such  alcoves  to  importune! 

Something  in  the  line  of  allegory,  apparently;  but  is  it  quite 
so  clear  to  you  what  it  means?  The  thought  would  seem  to 
be  subtle,  and  the  writer  not  quite  able  to  handle  his  analo- 
gies so  as  to  do  more  than  suggest  vaguely  his  meaning. 
The  music  is  gone,  too,  and  even  the  meter  halts  a  little. 
But  at  all  events,  in  all  three  of  the  passages  is  the  same 
delicacy,  a  certain  sensitiveness  to  finer  spiritual  moods. 
The  man's  art  of  expression,  you  will  say,  may  not  be  quite 
so  clear  and  facile  as  we  thought  at  first,  but  how  refined 
are  his  sympathies!     His  execution  may  sometimes  be  in- 


BROWNING  293 

adequate  to  his  remoter  thought,  but  we  shall  be  sure  to 
find  in  all  his  work,  however  profound  and  however  virile, 
an  inner  grace,  a  spiritual  charm.  And  as  we  read  page 
after  page  we  find  :»uch  an  interpretation  verified.  But  we 
turn  another  leaf,  and,  suddenly — what  is  this? — Mr. 
Sludge,  "the  Medium/' 

Now,  don't,  sir!     Don't  expose  me!     Just  this  once! 

This  was  the  first  and  only  time,  I'll  swear, — 

Look  at  me, — see,  I  kneel, — the  only  time, 

I  swear,  I  ever  cheated, — yes,  by  the  soul 

Of  Her  who  hears — (your  sainted  mother,  sir!) 

All,  except  this  last  accident,  was  truth — 

This  little  kind  of  slip! — and  even  this, 

It  was  your  own  wine,  sir,  the  good  champagne, 

(I  took  it  for  Catawba,  you're  so  kind,) 

Which  put  the  folly  in  my  head ! 

"Get  up?" 
You  still  inflict  on  me  that  terrible  face? 
You  show  no  mercy? — Not  for  Her  dear  sake, 
The  sainted  spirit's,  whose  soft  breath  even  now 
Blows  on  my  cheek — (don't  you  feel  something,  sir?) 
You'll  tell? 

Go  tell,  then !    Who  the  devil  cares 
What  such  a  rowdy  chooses  to  .  .  . 

Aie — aie — aie ! 
Please,  sir!  your  thumbs  are  through  my  windpipe,  sir! 
Ch— ch! 

Well,  sir,  I  hope  you've  done  it  now! 
Oh  Lord  !     I  little  thought,  sir,  yesterday, 
When  your  departed  mother  spoke  those  words 
Of  peace  through  me,  and  moved  you,  sir,  so  much, 
You  gave  me — (very  kind  it  was  of  you) 
These  shirt-studs — (better  take  them  back  again, 
Please,  sir) — yes,  little  did  I  think  so  soon 
A  trifle  of  trick,  all  through  a  glass  too  much 
Of  his  own  champagne,  would  change  my  best  of  friends 
Into  an  angry  gentleman! 

And  then  follow  thirty  mortal  pages  filled  with  keen  psy- 
chological analysis  in  which  this  poor  devil  of  a  trickster 


294  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

turns  his  vulgarity  wrong  side  out  and  upside  down  and 
holds  it  in  every  light  for  our  inspection.  One  flounders 
through  it  and  emerges  at  the  end  muttering,  "Is  this  poetry, 
or  what  is  it?"  For  it  is  plain  that  it  is  something  in  the 
way  of  literature;  its  very  grotesqueness  has  a  kind  of  force. 
There's  life  in  it,  at  all  events. 

These  passages  taken  almost  at  random  may  serve  to 
suggest  the  great  variety  of  manner  and  theme  in  Robert 
Browning's  poetry ;  though  they  only  suggest  it,  for  it  would 
be  quite  possible  to  select  three  times  as  many  more  pas- 
sages each  of  an  entirely  different  type  from  all  the  rest. 
I  doubt  whether  any  poet  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  so 
wide  a  range ;  and  certainly  no  other  recent  poet  of  anything 
like  equal  eminence  has  left  so  large  a  body  of  verse.  It 
is  evident,  therefore,  that  it  is  not  easy  to  hit  off  an 
estimate  of  Browning  in  a  few  well-turned  sen- 
tences, or  map  his  work  neatly  out  in  half  an  hour's 
talk. 

But  these  quotations  may  also  suggest  one  reason  why 
there  is  so  much  diversity  of  opinion  upon  Browning.  The 
truth  is  there  is  Browning  and  Browning:  some  very  clear 
and  some  very  cloudy,  some  very  graceful  and  some  very 
grotesque,  some  very  good  and  some — well  let  us  say,  very 
peculiar.  But  we  are  always  inclined  to  rate  an  author's 
work  in  the  lump.  We  take  our  poets  as  we  take  our  wives, 
to  love  and  to  cherish  for  better  and  for  worse.  The  result 
is  that  striking  diversities  of  quality  in  a  really  great  poet 
are  sure  to  provoke  strenuous  attack  and  strenuous  defense. 
It  is  hardly  in  human  nature  that  the  reader  who  falls  gen- 
uinely in  love  with  Pippa  and  Colombe  and  Pompilia  and 
Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  should  be  equally  enamored  of  Hohenstiel- 
Schwangau  and  Jochanan  Hakkadosh;  yet  ten  to  one,  he 
will  feel  bound  to  stand  up  for  his  Browning  stoutly  all 
through;  while  on  the  other  hand  that  unfortunate  mortal 
who,  with  some  foolish  notion  of  beginning  at  the  beginning, 
has  taken  his  first  taste  of  Browning  out  of  Pauline  or  Sor- 
dello  will  doubtless  always  go  on  protesting  that  he  can  find 
neither  poetry  nor  meaning  in  that  man. 


BROWNING  295 

I   realize  that  it  is  a  somewhat  hazardous  venture  to 
speak,  upon  any  question  on  which  opinions  are  so  sharply 
divided;  especially  if  one  feels  obliged,  as  I  must,  to  take 
the  view  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  that  there's  much  to  be 
said  on  both  sides.     It  is  certainly  absurd  to  speak  of  the 
most  of  Browning's  poetry  as  unintelligible,  or  even  diffi- 
cult; most  of  it  is  easy  enough  to  all  persons  who  don't  in- 
sist on  taking  their  poetry  merely  as  a  beverage  or  an  ano- 
dyne.    And  I   am  willing  to  go  a  great  deal  further  than 
that.     Browning's  best  things  move  me  more  deeply,  seem 
to  me  to  have  more  of  the  genuine  quality  of  inspiration, 
than  any  other  poetry  of  this  century — save  some  of  Words- 
worth's only.     But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  cannot  deny  that 
some  of  his  verse  seems  admirably  suited  to  tax  the  wits 
of  the  commentator  and  to  furnish  pleasant  exercise  to  the 
ingenuity  of  Browning  Societies.     Either  the  themes  are  not 
intrinsically  poetical  or  they  are  treated  in  a  subtle,  analytic 
fashion  inconsistent  with  genuine  poetical  handling.     When 
the  twentieth  century  shall  have  sifted  the  work  of  the  nine- 
teenth,   I    must   doubt   whether   Sordello,    or   Red   Cotton 
Night-Cap  Country ,  or  Pacchiarotto,  or  the  Parleyings,  or 
many  of  Ferishtah's  Fancies  will  be  found  among  the  poetry 
that  men  still  read.     For  this  admission,  however,  we  con- 
sole ourselves  by  remembering  that  posterity  has  been  con- 
tent to  forget  the  earliest  and  the  latest  work  of  many  great 
poets, — Wordsworth,   for  example.     And  the   amount  of 
Browning's  work  is  so  large  that  you  may  throw  out  a  good 
deal  and  still  leave  enough  to  furnish  a  broad  basis  for  his 
fame. 

But  it  seems  to  me  there  are  some  deficiencies  and  limita- 
tions characteristic  of  Mr.  Browning's  verse  at  every  period 
of  his  life.  Let  me  mention  some  of  them.  What  conces- 
sions we  must  make  to  the  perverse  who  will  none  of 
Browning,  we  will  m?ke  at  once  and  have  done  with  it.  In 
the  first  place,  I  believe  we  must  admit  that  much  of  Brown- 
ing's work,  even  in  his  best  period,  is  lacking  in  grace.  It 
leaves  upon  us  the  impression  of  robust  vigor  rather  than 
of  beauty.      The  truth   is   Browning  did  not  much  care  to 


296  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

produce  the  impression  of  beauty.     "Poesy,"  says  Keats 
somewhere,  "is  a  drainless  shower  of  light," 

And  they  shall  be  accounted  poet  kings 
Who  simply  tell  the  most  heart-easing  things. 

Now  this  is  precisely  what  Browning  would  not  have  said. 
The  object  of  poetry,  in  his  thought,  was  not  to  soothe,  but 
to  rouse;  not  to  minister  to  our  delight,  but  to  enlarge  and 
intensify  our  life.  And  if  it  is  said — as  it  may  be  with 
truth — that  this  is  the  highest  office  of  poetry,  why  we  have 
still  to  insist  that  it  is  not  the  only  office ;  that  poetry  should 
have  charm  as  well  as  might;  and  that  the  poet  who  neglects 
the  sweet  persuasive  grace  of  beauty  foregoes  half  his 
birthright.  There  is  a  poetry,  and  noble  poetry,  that  ap- 
peals primarily  to  the  passive  side  of  our  natures,  that 
calms  and  tranquilizes;  it  is  the  poetry  that  is  akin  to 
peace.  But  of  that  kind  of  poetry  Browning  never  wrote 
a  line.  And  more  than  this  there  rests  upon  the  truest 
poetry  a  certain  bloom  of  beauty.  And  this  Browning's 
does  not  have.  Not  but  that  his  verse  has  frequent  passages 
of  very  great  beauty.  These  passages  will  usually  be  found 
where  his  passion  is  at  its  height,  and  the  intensity  of  his 
emotion  sweeps  away  all  indirections  and  melts  down  all 
the  rougher  and  more  untractable  elements  of  his  language 
into  clear  and  glowing  utterance.  Then  he  sometimes  has 
the  impassioned  grace  of  our  old  Elizabethan  writers — there 
are  such  passages  not  a  few  in  the  dramas  and  in  The  Ring 
and  the  Book;  not  many  in  his  later  work.  Very  often  in 
his  lyrical  monologues,  too,  when  the  joy  or  the  pathos  is 
at  its  keenest,  the  language  suddenly  takes  on  that  thrilling 
sweetness,  the  last  charm  of  poetry.  Thus,  for  instance, 
in  A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's,  where  the  old  Venetian's  light 
music,  with  its  accidental  minor  strain,  suggests  all  the  life 
and  laughter  and  love  that  once  listened  to  those  notes, — 

till  in  due  time,  one  by  one, 
Some  with  lives  that  came  to  nothing,  some  with  deeds  as  well  undone, 
Death  stepped  tacitly  and  took  them  where  they  never  see  the  sun. 


BROWNING  297 

As  for  Venice  and  her  people,  merely  born  to  bloom  and  drop, 
Here  on  earth  they  bore  their  fruitage,  mirth  and   folly  were  the 

crop: 
What  of  soul  was  left,  I  wonder,  when  the  kissing  had  to  stop? 

"Dust  and  ashes!"  So  you  creak  it,  and  I  want  the  heart  to  scold. 
Dear  dead  women,  with  such  hair,  too — what's  become  of  all  the 

gold 
Used  to  hang  and  brush  their  bosoms?     I  feel  chilly  and  grown  old. 

Those  last  lines  send  a  shiver  of  passionate,  sweet  regret 
into  the  soul.  But  Browning's  lighter  verse  seldom  has 
this  crowning  grace.  He  cannot  give  to  ordinary  emotion 
the  charm  of  phrase,  or  beautify  by  speech  the  common  face 
of  life. 

Sometimes  Browning  seems  to  have  a  positive  prefer- 
ence for  the  harsh  or  the  grotesque  for  its  own  sake.  He 
carries  his  fear  of  anything  sentimental  or  effeminate  to  the 
opposite  extreme,  and  bandies  slang  about  the  most  grace- 
ful themes.  In  diction,  he  had  a  fancy  for  the  outre,  the 
colloquial,  sometimes  even  for  the  vulgar.  Why  should  a 
man  end  what  he  calls  a  poem,  on  the  charm  of  art,  with 
such  a  stanza  as  this? — 

Hobbs  hints  blue, — straight  he  turtle  eats: 
Nobbs  prints  blue, — claret  crowns  his  cup: 
Nokes  outdoes  Stokes  in  azure  feats, — 
Both  gorge.    Who  fished  the  murex  up? 
What  porridge  had  John  Keats? 

So  too  in  meter  he  often  prefers  audacious,  jolting 
rhymes  apparently  for  no  better  reason  than  that  they  are 
sure  to  shake  the  reader  up.  You  remember,  for  instance, 
that  little  poem,  Youth  and  Art,  in  which  a  man  and  a 
woman  no  longer  young  look  back  upon  the  early  days  when, 
rooming  on  opposite  sides  of  the  street,  they  were  very  con- 
veniently situated  for  falling  in  love,  but  preferred  art  in- 
stead, and  so  lost  the  chance  of  life.  It  is  a  very  character- 
istic poem,  with  a  genuine  touch  of  pathos  in  it,  quite 
unforgetable, — but  you  may  remember  some  of  its  rhymes: 


298  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

No  harm!     It  was  not  my  fault 

If  you  never  turned  your  eye's  tail  up 
As  I  shook  upon  E  in  alt.. 

Or  ran  the  chromatic  scale  up: 

•  ••••••• 

Could  you  say  so,  and  never  say, 

"Suppose  we  join  hands  and  fortunes, 
And  I  fetch  her  from  over  the  way, 

Her,  piano,  and  long  tunes  and  short  tunes"? 

But  you  meet  the  Prince  at  the  Board, 

I'm  queen  myself  at  bals-pare, 
I've  married  a  rich  old  lord, 

And  you're  dubbed  knight  and  an  R.  A. 

Now  here  Browning  wants  to  illustrate  the  truth — a 
favorite  truth  with  him,  and  lying,  as  we  shall  see,  at  the 
bottom  of  his  philosophy  of  life — that  our  unsophisticated, 
spontaneous  affections  are  a  safer  guide  to  happiness  than 
prudence  or  ambition;  but  he  is  so  fearful  his  sentiment  may 
get  limp  or  languorous  that  he  dashes  in  these  strokes  of  ab- 
surdity in  his  rhymes.  The  humor  in  these  passages  too  is 
very  characteristic  of  him.  For  Browning's  humor  often 
consists  chiefly  in  a  kind  of  rough  familiarity  of  manner,  a 
brusque  but  jovial  gaucherie.  We  Americans  would  say  it 
has  a  Western  flavor.  He  is  quite  unabashed  in  the  face 
of  the  greatest  names,  and  slaps  the  most  dignified  virtues 
on  the  back  with  a  kind  of  loud  intimacy. 

Now  I  take  it  that  in  all  these  cases  the  undeniable 
attraction  which  the  grotesque  had  for  Browning  is  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  in  the  grotesque  there  is  always  a 
certain  vigor  and  strength.  It  is,  so  to  say,  a  specific  against 
over-refinement  and  softness  of  manner,  a  proof  of  that 
robustness  and  mass  which  Browning  liked.  The  truth  is, 
he  was  so  in  love  with  force  that  he  was  a  little  afraid  of 
the  soothing  effect  of  grace,  of  melodious  numbers,  and 
rather  liked  any  device  that  would  shock  or  startle.  He 
had  the  broad  Gothic  taste  that,  under  its  loveliest  arches, 
high  up  among  the  flowing  lines,  will  carve  its  capitals  into 
quaint  and  grinning  faces.  He  relished  a  dash  of  wild, 
strong  flavor  in  life.     Some  of  the  most  vigorous  of  his 


BROWNING  299 

short  poems  are  studies  in  sheer  force,  in  picturesque  or 
rugged  shape.  Take,  for  instance,  the  Soliloquy  of  the 
Spanish  Cloister.  One  sees  how  Browning  enjoyed  that 
picture  of  crude,  ignorant,  and  here  half-innocent,  but  in- 
tense malignity.  The  monk  is  looking  out  the  window  at 
his  pet  aversion,  meek,  fair-faced  Brother  Lawrence,  who 
is  watering  his  flowers  in  the  garden: 

Gr-r-r — there  go,  my  heart's  abhorrence! 

Water  your  damned  flower-pots,  do ! 
If  hate  killed  men,  Brother  Lawrence, 

God's  blood,  would  not  mine  kill  you ! 
What?  your  myrtle-bush  wants  trimming? 

Oh,  that  rose  has  prior  claims — 
Needs  its  leaden  vase  filled  brimming? 

Hell  dry  you  up  with  its  flames! 

At  the  meal  we  sit  together: 

Salve  tibi!    I  must  hear 
Wise  talk  of  the  kind  of  weather, 

Sort  of  season,  time  of  year: 
Not  a  plenteous  cork-crop:  scarcely 

Dare  we  hope  oak-galls,  I  doubt: 
What's  the  Latin  name  for  "parsley"? 

What's  the  Greek  name  for  Swine's  Snout? 

•  •••••• 

Oh,  those  melons!     If  he's  able 

We're  to  have  a  feast!  so  nice! 
One  goes  to  the  Abbot's  table, 

All  of  us  get  each  a  slice. 
How  go  on  your  flowers?     None  double? 

Not  one  fruit-sort  can  you  spy? 
Strange! — And  I,  too,  at  such  trouble 

Keep  them  close-nipped  on  the  sly! 

There's  a  great   text   in   Galatians, 

Once  you  trip  on  it,  entails 
Twenty-nine  distinct  damnations, 

One  sure,  if  another  fails: 
If  I  trip  him  just  a-dying, 

Sure  of  heaven  as  sure  can  be, 
Spin  him  round  and  send  him  flying 

Off  to  hell,  a  Manichee? 


300  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Or,  there's  Satan ! — one  might  venture 

Pledge  one's  soul  to  him  yet  leave 
Such  a  flaw  in  the  indenture 

As  he'd  miss  till,  past  retrieve, 
Blasted  lay  that  rose-acacia 

We're  so  proud  of !    Hy,  Zy,  Hine  .  .  . 
'St,  there's  Vespers!     Plena  gratia, 

Ave,  Virgo!    G-r-r — you  swine! 

Only  I  think  Browning  always  in  danger  of  overdoing 
this  tendency  to  crude  strength.  He  forgets  that  in  the 
very  best  poetry  strength  and  beauty  are  married.  For  his 
grotesqueness  is  not  infrequently  quite  gratuitous;  he  con- 
stantly makes  upon  one  the  impression  of  a  man  not  daring 
to  be  as  graceful  as  he  can.  In  the  Epilogue  to  one  of  his 
later  volumes — the  Pacchiarotto — he  expressly  disclaims 
the  wish  to  charm  by  beauty  of  manner,  and  avers  that 
strength  and  sweetness  cannot  go  together  : 

'Tis  said  I  brew  stiff  drink, 

But  the  deuce  a  flavor  of  grape  is  there. 
Hardly  a  May-go-down,  't  is  just 
A  sort  of  gruff  Go-down-it-must — 
No  Merry-go-down,  no  gracious  gust 

Commingles  the  racy  with  Springtide's  rare! 

"What  wonder,"  say  you,  "that  we  cough,  and  blink, 
At  Autumn's  heady  drink?" 

Is  it  a  fancy,  friends? 

Mighty  and  mellow  are  never  mixed, 
Though  mighty  and  mellow  be  born  at  once. 
Sweet  for  the  future, — strong  for  the  nonce! 

Man's  thoughts  and  loves  and  hates! 
Earth  is  my  vineyard,  these  grew  there: 

Earth's  yield !    Who  yearn  for  the  Dark  Blue  Sea's, 
Let  them  "lay,  pray,  bray" — the  addle-pates! 
Mine  be  Man's  thoughts,  loves,  hates! 

But  I  believe  there  is  a  heresy  in  these  lines  that  has  done 
much  to  limit  the  value  of  their  author's  work.  Despite  his 
assertion  it  still  is  true  that  mighty  and  mellow  are  mixed 
in  the  wine  the  greatest  poets  pour  us;  and  I  fear  that  to 


BROWNING  301 

some  of  Mr.  Browning's  vintage  no  ripening  years  will 
ever  give  the  true  ambrosial  flavor. 

And  then  I  should  say,  more  broadly,  that  Browning 
was  always  deficient  in  the  sense  of  phrase,  had  not  in  any 
very  high  degree  the  gift  of  poetic  expression.  We  all 
read  Browning, — I  suppose, — many  of  us  admire  him,  most 
of  us  wonder  at  him;  but  who  quotes  him?  The  fact  is 
that,  for  the  most  part,  Browning  is  not  a  quotable  poet. 
Even  in  his  best  poems,  those  that  most  arouse  and  inspire, 
I  do  not  often  find  that  subtle  felicity  of  phrase  which  slips 
into  the  memory  and  stays  there.  His  word  is  not  the  spon- 
taneous, inevitable  one.  His  line  doesn't  have  that  inde- 
finable magical  power  which  marks  the  most  perfect  work. 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  you  remember,  used  to  fix  upon  this 
power  of  phrase  and  single  lines,  as  the  surest  touchstone 
of  really  great  poetry.  It  is  a  mark,  an  accent  of  distinction, 
he  used  to  say,  which  we  recognize  but  cannot  explain.  Now 
that  this  quality  is  entirely  a  matter  of  expression,  one 
would  hardly  affirm;  but  surely  it  is  largely  so.  For  we 
often  find  it  when  the  underlying  thought  is  neither  new  nor 
commanding.  Could  anything  be  simpler,  for  instance, 
than  the  thought  and  sentiment  of  Wordsworth's  lines  to  his 
Highland  reaper  who  sings  among  the  sheaves? 

Will  no  one  tell  me  what  she  sings? 
Perhaps  the  plaintive  numbers  flow 
For  old,  unhappy,  far  off  things, 
And  battles  long  ago. 

And  yet  the  accent  is  here.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
often  wanting  in  poetry  of  vivid  imagination  and  intense 
emotion.  Browning's  poetry  will  afford  us  proof  enough 
of  that.  Take  his  Andrea  del  Sarto,  for  example,  one  of 
the  greatest  short  poems  of  this  century,  conceived  with 
keenest  dramatic  sympathy,  suffused  with  the  deepest 
pathos,  the  pathos  of  failure.  I  seem  to  see  that  man 
Andrea  always,  see  the  very  heart  of  him;  nay,  I  see  even 
that  still,  gray  twilight  on  the  slope  of  Fiesoli  when  he  told 


302  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

his  story,  hear  in  the  hush  of  it  the  clear  note  of  the  convent 
bell,  and  the  low  whistle  of  the  lurking  lover;  but  I  can 
hardly  recall  a  single  line  of  what  Andrea  says.  Browning 
often  seems  to  me  to  be  striving  hard  for  adequate  expres- 
sion, but  not  quite  attaining  it.  It  is  as  if  his  thought  were 
too  swift  for  his  word.  He  is  an  eager,  tongue-tied  poet. 
Had  his  gift  of  utterance  and  his  artistic  sense  of  form  been 
commensurate  with  his  other  powers,  I  am  inclined  to  say 
that  Robert  Browning  would  have  been  the  greatest  English 
poet  in  the  last  two  centuries. 

Of  late  years  it  hasn't  been  quite  the  correct  thing  to 
call  Browning  obscure.     It  used  to  be.     Even  the  youngest 
of  us  is  old  enough  to  remember  when  Browningese  was 
spoken  of  as  "a  Babylonish  dialect" ;  when  a  select  school 
offered    instruction    in    French,    German,    and — Browning; 
when  Douglas  Jerrold, — was  it  he? — once  in  convalescence, 
thanked  God  he'd  not  gone  mad,  after  his  wife,  to  whom  he 
had  handed  the  book,  confessed  that  she,  too,  could  make 
nothing  of  the  Sordello:  and  a  multitude  of  other  such 
stories,    now    grown    somewhat    musty.      For    we    have 
changed  all  that;  and  nowadays  not  to  understand  Browning 
is    by    no    means    a    proof    of    sanity, — rather    the    con- 
trary.     To   be   sure,    his   admirers    admit    that   his   style 
has  striking  peculiarities;  that,  however,  they  claim  is  a 
merit.     It  is  highly  individual,  they  say;  it  is  Browning's 
own.     No  one  else  writes  anything  like  it, — which  is  prob- 
ably true;  though  whether  it  be  a  merit  or  not,  there  may 
be  difference  of  opinion.    I  should  think  it  would  have  to  be 
admitted  that  there  are  certain  peculiarities  of  Browning's 
manner  that  do  not  always  tend  to  clearness.    For  instance, 
as  all  his  readers  know,  Browning  is  especially  prone  to 
audacities  of  ellipsis  and  arrangement.     He  is  impatient  of 
those  humbler  parts  of  speech  that  only  serve  the  grammar; 
and  he  goes  through  his  verses  with  merciless  spud  to  root 
out  all  the  prepositions  and  conjunctions  and  relative  pro- 
nouns.    His  ventures  in  arrangement  are  sometimes  still 
more  confusing.     Mr.  Hutton  singles  out  these  two  lines 
from  the  Sordello, 


BROWNING  303 

To  be  by  him  themselves  made  act, 
Not  watch  Sordello  acting  each  of  them. 

"What  they  mean,"  says  Mr.  Hutton,  "I  have  not  the  most 
distant  notion.  Mr.  Browning  might  as  well  have  written 
'To  be  by  him,  her,  himself,  herself,  themselves,  made  act, 
etc'  for  any  vestige  of  meaning  I  can  attach  to  this  curious 
mob  of  pronouns  and  verbs."  If  this  seems  rather  severely 
obtuse  of  Mr.  Hutton,  why  we  must  remember  that  it  was 
written  nearly  a  half  century  ago,  before  the  Browning  sense 
had  been  so  generally  developed.  But  the  lines  are  a  good 
example  of  the  liberties  Browning  allows  himself  in  throw- 
ing words  together.  Proper  accentuation  makes  them  in- 
telligible, I  suppose : 

To  be  by  him  themselves  made  act, 
Not  watch  Sordello  acting  each  of  them ; 

that  is,  To  be  themselves  made  to  act  by  Sordello,  and  not 
each  of  them  to  watch  his  acting.  It  is  commonly  taken  to 
be  a  rule  of  good  composition,  whether  in  prose  or  verse, 
that  the  structure  shall  be  so  clear  that  none  of  the  reader's 
mental  energy  need  be  consumed  in  deciding  what  the  order 
of  thought  is.  But  it  is  evident  that  Mr.  Browning  never 
did  consent  to  be  under  bondage  to  any  hard  laws  of  the 
rhetoric  or  grammar.  When  these  liberties  result  in  some 
undoubted  poetic  gain,  some  increased  swiftness  or  inten- 
sity, why  it  would  be  finical  to  object  to  them;  nay,  in  such 
cases,  the  quickened  perception  of  the  reader  will  usually 
find  no  difficulty  in  them.  But  I  think  they  sometimes  occur 
when  there  is  no  such  excuse.  Good  composition  either  in 
prose  or  poetry  is  vastly  difficult  work;  Browning  seemed 
always  somewhat  impatient  of  it,  and  a  little  too  much  in- 
clined to  insist  on  a  division  of  the  labor  between  himself 
and  his  reader. 

Then  again,  the  poetic  form  Browning  preferred  usually 
makes  at  least  a  second  reading  necessary.  For  two  thirds 
of  all  Browning's  poetry,  nine  tenths  of  all  his  best  poetry, 
is  in  the  form  of  the  dramatic  monologue.     Now  the  dra- 


304  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

matic  monologue  is  what  the  Irishman  called  pretty  accu- 
rately "a  dialogue  between  one  person."     And  if  there's  a 
bull  in  the  definition,  why  there's  a  bull  in  the  thing.     The 
dramatic  monologue  is  not  a  soliloquy,  but  really  a  bit  of 
drama;  there  is  only  one  speaker,  but  at  least  one  other 
person  is  supposed  to  be  present,  interjecting  questions,  re- 
plying, approving  or  disapproving,  and  continually  chang- 
ing the  inflection  of  the  speaker's  statement.     Moreover, 
there  is  usually  no  means  of  knowing,  to  begin  with,  who  is 
the  speaker,  what  are  his  circumstances,  or  what  the  theme 
of  his  speaking.     It  is,  as  I  said,  a  bit  of  drama,  but  a  bit 
of  drama  without  any  list  of  dramatis  persona,  with  no 
indication  of  scene  or  character,  and  with  all  the  parts  can- 
celled but  one.     In  fact,  if  you  sit  in  a  perfectly  dark  room 
and  hear  an  entire  stranger  talk  into  the  hither  end  of  a 
telephone^  you  will  have  a  very  neat  idea  of  the  plan  of  the 
dramatic  monologue.      I   don't   mean   to   imply  that  this 
monologue  is  not  often  a  most  effective  artistic  form ;  it  is, 
and  often  very  beautiful  too.    Nothing  could  be  better  suited 
to  that  intense  and  concentrated  expression  of  personality  in 
which  Browning  excels ;  but  none  the  less,  it  is  a  somewhat 
difficult  form  for  the  reader.    In  the  first  place  it  is  usually 
necessary  to  read  the  whole  poem  through  once  in  order  to 
get  at  the  persons  and  the  situation;  we  must,  so  to  speak, 
walk  quite  round  the  house  on  the  outside  before  we  can  find 
the  door  to  let  us  in.   And  then  the  condensed  and  highly 
suggestive  nature  of  the  composition  calls  for  the  closest  and 
most  sympathetic  attention  from  the  reader  throughout. 

But  Browning's  worst  obscurity  does  not  arise  from 
any  such  mannerisms  in  form  and  structure.  With  his  man- 
nerisms we  can  become  familiar;  but  no  amount  of  familiar- 
ity will  ever  make  easy  such  a  passage  as  this.  It  is  from 
one  of  the  most  interesting  of  his  later  books,  Fcrishtah's 
Fancies,  and  the  subject  of  it  is  the  possibility  of  taking  an 
optimistic  view  of  this  present  evil  world : 

"Take  one  and  try  conclusions — this,  suppose ! 
God  is  all-good,  all-wise,  all-powerful:  truth? 
Take  it  and  rest  there.    What  is  man?    Not  God: 


BROWNING  305 

None  of  these  absolutes  therefore, — yet  himself, 

A  creature  with  a  creature's  qualities. 

Make  them  agree,  these  two  conceptions!     Each 

Abolishes  the  other.  Is  man  weak, 

Foolish  and  bad?  He  must  be  Ahriman, 

Co-equal  with  an  Ormuzd,  Bad  with  Good, 

Or  else  a  thing  made  at  the  Prime  Sole  Will, 

Doing  a  maker's  pleasure — with  results 

Which — call,  the  wide  world  over,  'what  must  be' — 

But,  from  man's  point  of  view,  and  only  point 

Possible  to  his  powers,  call — evidence 

Of  goodness,  wisdom,  strength  ?  we  mock  ourselves 

In  all  that's  best  of  us, — man's  blind  but  sure 

Craving  for  these  in  very  deed  not  word, 

Reality  and  not  illusions.    Well, — 

Since  these  nowhere  exist — nor  there  where  cause 

Must  have  effect,  nor  here  where  craving  means 

Craving  unfollowed  by  fit  consequence 

And  full  supply,  aye  sought  for,  never  found — 

These — what  are  they  but  man's  own  rule  of  right? 

A  scheme  of  goodness  recognized  by  man, 

Although  by  man  unrealizable, — 

Not  God's  with  whom  to  will  were  to  perform : 

Nowise  performed  here,  therefore  never  willed. 

What  follows  but  that  God,  who  could  the  best, 

Has  willed  the  worst, — while  man,  with  power  to  match 

Will  with  performance,  were  deservedly 

Hailed  the  supreme — provided  .  .  .  here's  the  touch 

That  breaks  the  bubble  .  .  .  this  concept  of  man's 

Were  man's  own  work,  his  birth  of  heart  and  brain, 

His  native  grace,  no  alien  gift  at  all. 

The  bubble  breaks  here.     Will  of  man  create? 

No  more  than  this  my  hand  which  strewed  the  beans 

Produced  them  also  from  its  finger-tips. 

Back  goes  creation  to  its  source,  source  prime 

And  ultimate,  the  single  and  the  sole." 

I  should  think  the  most  ardent  devotee  of  Browning  must 
admit  this  to  be  obscure.  He  would  doubtless  say,  however, 
that  its  obscurity  is  due  to  the  abstruseness  and  subtlety  of 
the  thought.  We  cannot  expect,  he  would  urge,  easy  and 
simple  expression  upon  such  a  theme,  any  more  than  we 
expect  it  in  Butler's  Analogy  or  the  philosophy  of  the  Un- 
conscious;   even    angelic   intelligences   on    such    themes — as 


306  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Milton  may  remind  us — "find  no  end,  in  wandering  mazes 
lost."  Well,  I  should  say  that  if  any  subject  does  present 
such  inherent  difficulties  as  to  make  clear  statement  impos- 
sible, why  then  it  is  not  a  fit  subject  for  poetry.  But  the 
truth  is  that  the  obscurity  in  such  passages  as  this,  is  largely 
in  the  expression.  The  thought  is  not  methodically  arranged 
or  clearly  drawn  out.  The  poet  is  impatient  to  be  at  the 
goal  of  his  argument;  he  starts  a  thought  and  leaves  it  half 
uttered  to  hasten  after  another;  he  cuts  his  sentence  into  dis- 
jointed fragments;  he  hopelessly  deranges  his  grammar; 
almost  the  only  mark  of  punctuation  in  the  passage  is  that 
last  resort  of  puzzled  syntax,  the  dash,  of  which  there  are 
thirteen  in  the  lines  I  read.  The  result  is  that  the  passage 
looks  like  a  page  of  Butler's  Analogy,  but  a  page  of  Butler's 
Analogy  struck  by  lightning.  Something  of  this  kind  of  ob- 
scurity you  can  find  in  every  volume  Browning  wrote;  in 
Pauline,  and  Sordello,  and  Ferishtah,  and  La  Saisiaz,  and 
Parleyings  you  can  find  a  great  deal  of  it. 

Another  and  even  more  vexatious  kind  of  obscurity  oc- 
curs, now  and  then,  in  the  work  even  of  Mr.  Browning's 
best  period.  I  mean  that  obscurity  which  results  from  the 
attempt  to  convey  definite  meaning  by  remote,  or  fanciful, 
or  confused  analogies.  For  instance  here  is  the  last  stanza 
of  a  little  poem — I  suppose  the  situation  suggested  by  the 
two  preceding  stanzas  is  that  of  a  lover  who  tires  of  his  lady, 
of  the  constant  bloom  of  June ;  but  I  don't  think  the  meaning 
is  made  much  clearer  by  the  context : 

And  after,  for  pastime, 

If  June  be  refulgent 
With  flowers  in  completeness, 

All  petals,  no  prickles, 

Delicious  as  trickles 
Of  wine  poured  at  mass-time, — 

And  choose  One  indulgent 

To  redness  and  sweetness: 
Or  if,  with  experience  of  man  and  of  spider, 
June  use  my  June-lightning,  the  strong  insect-ridder, 
And  stop  the  fresh  film-work, — why,  June  will  consider. 


BROWNING  307 

It  is  only  a  dim  conjecture  I  get  from  this ;  but  I  am  sure  Mr. 
Browning  meant  me  to  get  something  more  than  that. 
There  is,  you  know,  a  kind  of  lyric  poetry  which  does  not 
ask  any  definite  meaning,  but  like  music  only  vaguely  sug- 
gests a  sentiment  or  emotion;  Shelley  wrote  indescribably 
beautiful  verse  of  that  sort;  but  Browning  doesn't.  The  in- 
tellectual element  in  him  is  too  strong  for  that,  and  in  all 
his  lyrics  you  feel  sure  there  is  definite  meaning,  if  only 
you  could  get  at  it. 

I  think  the  cause  of  such  obscurity  as  that  of  the 
two  passages  I  have  just  read  is  to  be  found  in  that  peculiar 
constitution  of  Browning's  genius  from  which  proceeds  most 
that  is  characteristic,  good  as  well  as  bad,  in  all  his  work. 
His  obscurity  is  an  almost  inevitable  accompaniment  of  that 
combination  of  qualities  upon  which  his  power  depends. 
For,  if  we  seek  to  analyze  Browning's  genius,  we  shall  find, 
I  think,  at  the  root  of  it,  as  its  essential,  distinguishing  char- 
acteristic, the  union  of  two  qualities  not  often  combined  in 
one  man, — the  intense,  eager  temper,  and  the  curious,  subtle, 
speculative  temper.  To  find  either  of  these  alone  is  common 
enough ;  to  find  them  together  is  extremely  uncommon.  The 
temperament  of  the  lover  or  the  hero  united  with  the  tem- 
perament of  the  casuist  or  the  diplomat, — that  is  Browning. 
When  the  two  sides  of  his  nature  work  together  with  bal- 
ance and  harmony,  then  indeed  we  have  poetry  that  for 
combined  passion  and  wisdom  is  unmatched  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  But  what  I  am  just  now  insisting  on  is  that  the 
work  of  such  a  writer  must  often  be  obscure.  His  curious, 
subtilizing  intellect  is  attracted,  not  by  the  broad  and  open 
truths  of  life,  common  to  all  men  and  easily  understood,  but 
rather  by  the  mysterious  truths  that  lie  in  the  depths  of  our 
souls,  by  those  questions  of  conduct  that  are  perplexed  and 
difficult,  by  those  types  of  character  that  are  unusual  or 
enigmatic.  Browning  always  had  this  predilection  for  in- 
tricate psychology,  or  for  puzzling  questions  of  casuistry. 
Nothing  pleased  him  better  than  to  expose  the  plausible  rea- 
sonings with   which   men   deceive   others    and   half   deceive 


308  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

themselves.  Bishop  Blougram's  Apology,  for  instance,  and 
Prince  H  ohenstiel-Schivangau  are  good  examples  of  the  zest 
with  which  he  tracked  a  speaker  through  a  long  course  of 
special  pleading  to  a  conclusion  recognized  as  only  half 
true  at  last.  To  handle  themes  like  these  with  clearness 
demands  not  only  consummate  skill  but  tireless  patience. 
You  must  have  either  the  slow  analytic  habit  of  mind  which 
is  content  to  syllogize  and  demonstrate,  or  else  the  brooding, 
reflective  habit  which  gradually  transmutes  thought  into 
image  and  sentiment,  as  Tennyson  does,  for  instance,  in  the 
In  Memoriam.  *But  neither  habit  is  possible  to  Browning's 
eager,  passionate  temper.  His  mental  action  is  always 
swift  and  nervous.  His  perception  darts  like  quicksilver 
through  all  the  windings  of  an  intricate  mental  process. 
His  mind  is  always  a-wrestle.  It  never  lies  quiet  to  mirror 
the  shapes  of  passing  thought,  as  Tennyson's  always  does. 
Still  less  can  he  endure  the  reasoning  process.  He  cannot 
delay  for  the  deliberate  steps  of  logic.  You  will  find  all 
Browning's  deepest  beliefs  rest  at  last  not  on  reasoning 
but  on  the  swifter  assurance  of  intuition.  If  a  man  thus 
attempts,  as  Browning  habitually  does,  to  write  upon  the 
most  abstruse  themes  of  the  philosopher  with  the  fine  frenzy 
of  the  lover,  when  he  succeeds,  he  will  be  sure  to  write 
wise  and  noble  poetry;  but  when  he  does  not  succeed,  he  will 
be  sure  to  write  very  obscure  poetry.  Browning  certainly 
illustrates  both  statements.  That  he  failed  in  his  early  at- 
tempts is  not  strange;  it  would  have  been  incredible  had  he 
succeeded.  In  Pauline  and  Sordello  he  was  trying  to  explore 
the  most  hidden  recesses  of  the  human  heart  at  an  age  when 
Tennyson  was  practising  his  onomatopoeia  with  Airy  Fairy 
Lilians  and  Marianas  in  the  Moated  Grange.  In  his  later 
verse,  too,  I  think  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  metaphysics 
are  often  too  much  for  the  poetry.  As  I  have  intimated, 
at  my  time  of  life  I  don't  propose  to  go  through  the  diffi- 
culties of  forming  a  taste  for  Fifine,  Ferishtah,  and  the  rest. 
But  there  is  that  long,  glorious  period  of  thirty  years,  be- 
tween Sordello  and  Fifine,  in  which  his  work,  with  slight 
exception,  is  clear,  well-balanced,  inspiring;  on  the  whole 


BROWNING  309 

I  think  a  nobler  body  of  verse  than  any  other  English  poet 
wrote  between  1840  and  1870. 

For  I  have  played  the  advocatus  diaboli  long  enough.  I 
too  claim  to  be  a  lover  of  Browning,  if  not  a  devotee.  Let 
us  come  to  his  praises. 

I  may  summarize  all  I  have  to  say  in  praise  of  Brown- 
ing— and  higher  praise  I  hardly  know  how  to  give — in  the 
statement  that  he  is  preeminently,  and  in  all  senses,  the  poet 
of  life.  He  had  what  has  been  called  "the  splendid  capacity 
for  being  alive"  himself.  No  other  English  poet  since 
Shakespeare  leaves  upon  us  the  impression  of  such  intense 
vitality  as  Robert  Browning.  He  evidently  made  that  im- 
pression upon  all  those  who  knew  him  personally, — a  large, 
robust,  healthy  personality,  pulsing  full  of  life  in  body,  brain, 
and  heart.  There  was  nothing  narrow  and  nothing  languid 
about  the  man.  He  seemed  to  put  the  whole  of  himself  into 
his  every  act.  And  this  personal  force  was  so  eager  and 
expansive  that  the  man  couldn't  be  conventionalized,  or 
narrowed  into  exclusive  sympathy  with  any  class  or  order. 
He  was,  in  the  best  sense,  the  most  democratic  of  English 
poets.  Think  of  trying  to  say  Lord  Browning!  You  know 
he  is  the  only  English  poet  of  eminence  in  the  last  two  cen- 
turies who  lived  to  be  over  sixty  years  old  without  settling 
back  into  the  ranks  of  the  political  conservatives.  You 
remember  his  sonnet,  Why  I  am  a  Liberal,  written  when  he 
was  seventy-three  years  old: 

"Why?"     Because  all  I  haply  can  and  do, 
All  that  I  am  now,  all  I  hope  to  be, — 
Whence  comes  it  save  from  fortune  setting  free 
Body  and  soul  the  purpose  to  pursue, 
God  traced  for  both?     If  fetters,  not  a  few, 
Of  prejudice,  convention,  fall   from  me, 
These  shall  I  bid  men — each  in  his  degree 
Also  God-guided — bear,  and  gayly,  too? 

But  little  do  or  can  the  best  of  us: 

That  little  is  achieved  through  Liberty. 

Who,  then,  dares  hold,  emancipated  thus, 
His  fellow  shall  continue  bound?     Not  I, 

Who  live,  love,  labor  freely,  nor  discuss 

A  brother's  right  to  freedom.     That  is  "Why." 


310  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

And  his  vitality  never  waned.  His  optimism  was  invincible. 
He  never  reached  the  term  when  he  was  ready  to  say, 

It  is  time  to  be  old, 
To  take  in  sail. 

His  later  work  may  be  obscure,  but  not  because  he  was 
aging;  rather,  as  I  said,  it  is  because  his  powers  are  too 
eager  and  swift;  he  is  surging  too  full  of  life  for  the  meas- 
ured and  ordered  utterance  his  theme  demands.  Browning 
is  the  only  English  poet  I  remember  who  lived  to  see  more 
than  fifty  years  and  didn't  grow  old  a  day.  Age  couldn't 
wither  him.  And  this  personal  force  of  the  man  goes  into 
all  his  work,  making  it  vital,  stimulating.  You  can't  read 
Browning  while  you  are  standing  on  one  leg  or  slipping  into 
an  after  dinner  doze. 

Now  with  this  intense  interest  in  life  himself,  it  was  in- 
evitable that  Browning  in  his  poetry  should  be  concerned 
almost  entirely,  not  with  abstractions,  but  with  persons.  The 
title  of  one  of  his  best  volumes  might  be  fitly  applied  to  all 
his  works,  Men  and  Women.  He  never  really  cared  for  any- 
thing else.  He  had  a  remarkable  gift  of  description;  but 
he  seldom  cared  to  use  it.  Almost  never  will  you  find  in  his 
verse  those  long  and  brilliant  passages  of  pure  description 
which  so  often  brighten  the  pages  of  Tennyson.  The  land- 
scape was  of  interest  to  Browning  only  as  a  setting  for  his 
action,  and  his  best  pictures  of  it  are  momentary  vivid 
glimpses  seen  through  the  passion-illumined  eyes  of  some  of 
his  men  and  women.  Take  this  of  the  Roman  Campagna, 
as  it  is  seen — nay,  as  the  very  soul  of  it  is  felt — by  the 
yearning  lovers  set  solitary  in  the  midst  of  it, — 

The  champaign  with  its  endless  fleece 
Of  feathery  grasses  everywhere! 
Silence  and  passion,  joy  and  peace, 

An  everlasting  wash  of  air — 
Rome's  ghost  since  her  decease. 

Readers  of  Browning  will  remember  how  many  of  his  best 
poems  have  some  vivid  setting  in  the  external  world — the 
gray  twilight  of  Andrea  del  Sarto;  the  morning  of  David's 


BROWNING  311 

divine  vision  in  Saul;  those  pauses  in  the  flight  of  Pompilia 
and  Caponsacchi — 

We  stepped  into  a  hovel  to  get:  food ; 

•  •••••• 

All  outside  is  lone  field,  moon   and  such  peace. 

What  a  lovely  line  that  1    And  the  passionate,  thunder-laden 
hour  of  Sebald  and  Ottima  in  the  Pippa  Passes,  when 

Swift  ran  the  searching  tempest  overhead ; 

And  ever  and  anon  some  bright  white  shaft 

Burned  through  the  pine-tree  roof,  here  burned  and  there, 

As  if  God's  messenger  through  the  close  wood  screen 

Plunged  and  replunged  his  weapon  at  a  venture, 

Feeling  for  guilty  thee  and  me:  then  broke 

The  thunder  like  a  whole  sea  overhead — 

Half  a  hundred  such  passages  will  occur  to  any  lover 
of  Browning  as  examples  of  what  I  mean.  You  cannot  for- 
get them.  But  they  are  hardly  description;  rather  our  in- 
tense sympathy  with  the  persons  flashes  all  their  surround- 
ings suddenly  into  our  memory  forever. 

So,  too,  Browning  even  in  his  most  abstruse  passages 
seldom  discusses  general  truths  in  the  abstract.  It  is  rather 
the  truth  as  incarnated  in  persons,  taken  up  into  the  in- 
dividual life  that  he  cares  for.  For,  after  all,  men  and 
women  are  the  most  interesting  things  in  this  world.  And 
what  a  company  of  them  in  Browning's  book  1  Speak  of 
Browning's  men  and  what  a  throng  come  crowding  into 
memory, — Andrea,  and  Valence,  and  Mertoun,  and  Fra 
Lippo,  and  Herve  Riel,  and  Waring,  and  Ogniben,  and 
Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  and  Abt  Vogler,  and  the  Pope,  and  Guido, 
and  Caponsacchi,  and  Saul,  and  David,  and  John  the  Apostle 
— and  scores  of  others,  each  a  separate,  living  human  soul. 
And  the  women — that  company  is  more  wonderful  still: 
little  Pippa,  hopeful  health  and  innocence  personified;  the 
wife  in  By  the  Fireside,  who,  I  suppose,  is  Elizabeth  Barrett 
herself;  the  two  Duchesses;  Constance;  poor  Mildred  of 
A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,  that  "lady  like  a  dew  drop," 
crushed  by  a  fate  more  pitiful,  more  unutterably  pathetic 
than  anything  I  remember  in  modern  poetry;  noble  Colombe, 


312  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

with  whom — to  say  truth — of  all  the  company  I  am  most 
in  love  myself;  and  that  wonderful  Pompilia,  Roman  waif 
that  by  God's  good  grace,  even  under  the  smitings  of  devilish 
malignity,  grows  into  the  stature  of  perfect  womanhood, 
learns  the  ransoming  power  of  a  true  affection  and  the  mys- 
terious benedictions  of  motherhood,  and  dies  a  blessed 
martyr,  a  thing  enskied  and  sainted,— but  time  would  fail 
me  to  do  more  than  begin  that  long  list  of  Browning's 
women.  Surely  no  other  English  poet  save  Shakespeare 
only  can  match  them.  And  what  women  they  are  1  Women 
throughout,  not  men ;  and  yet  strong  as  well  as  sweet,  firm  of 
will,  broad  of  intellect,  rich  in  all  varied  graces  and  charm. 
If  I  were  a  woman,  I  would  give  Robert  Browning,  the  most 
robust  and  virile  of  modern  poets,  the  high  praise  of  having 
shown  better  than  any  one  else,  what  woman  may  be  and  do. 
And  think  what  a  range  of  experiences,  experiences  too 
of  the  most  profound  questions  of  human  life,  is  represented 
by  these  men  and  women  of  Browning's  creation.  In  breadth 
of  dramatic  sympathy  Browning,  I  should  say,  is  the  most 
remarkable  English  poet  for  two  hundred  and  fifty  years; 
some  of  our  novelists  may  perhaps  equal  him,  but  no  poet 
can.  He  isn't,  indeed,  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word  a 
dramatist.  He  hasn't  the  skill  and  patience  necessary 
for  dramatic  construction.  He  is  in  haste  to  get  at 
the  heart  of  his  action,  and  his  dramas  usually,  there- 
fore, are  all  catastrophe.  And  then  Browning  hasn't 
the  serene  artistic  impartiality  of  the  perfect  dramatist.  He 
never  can  hide  himself  behind  his  characters,  sink  his  own 
personality  in  theirs,  as  Shakespeare  does.  Browning  him- 
self is  always  in  his  world,  and  we  are  never  at  a  loss  to 
perceive  his  own  energetic  agreement  or  dissent  in  whatever 
his  characters  utter.  His  interest  in  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  is  not  the  pure  joy  of  the  dramatist  in  watching 
the  varied  procession  of  human  life  pass  by,  but  rather  the 
interest  of  the  speculative  philosopher  and  moralist  who 
would  see  what  every  form  of  human  action  and  passion, 
even  of  sin  and  folly,  can  say  for  itself.  Even  in  his  best 
period  he  had  rather  too  much  liking  for  intricate  psychol- 


BROWNING  313 

ogy.  That  is  why  he  prefers  the  monologue,  and  why  even 
in  his  dramas  the  interest  all  centers  in  the  leading  figure. 
He  couldn't,  like  Shakespeare,  write  a  play  in  the  broad 
manner  of  real  life,  in  which  dull  folks  and  poor  common- 
place devils  have  a  chance  as  well  as  their  betters. 

For,  however  wide  the  range  of  Browning's  characters, 
you  will  find  that  they  are  all  alike  in  that  they  all  have  a 
certain  fire  and  intensity, — a  richness  of  passion  or  of  in- 
tellect,— usually  of  both.  In  Browning's  men  and  women 
the  tide  of  life  is  always  at  the  full.  The  paler  joys,  the 
lesser  sorrows,  the  commonplace  out  of  which  our  tame 
daily  life  is  made,  are  no  stuff  for  his  verse.  In  this  world 
full  of  strange  problems  and  great  passions  he  has  no 
mind  to  sing  the  hopes  and  fears  of  pretty  girls  or  nice 
young  men  whose  fancy  lightly  turns  to  thoughts  of  love, 
to  watch  the  miller's  daughter  bend  above  the  dimpled 
stream,  or  Lady  Flora  take  her  broidery  frame  and  add 
a  crimson  to  the  quaint  macaw.  There's  a  charm  in  all  that 
doubtless;  but  not  for  a  nature  eager,  like  Browning's,  to 
plumb  the  depths  of  human  life. 

All  striving  and  aggressive  phases  of  personality,  on  the 
other  hand,  have  a  fascination  for  Browning.  He  loves 
power,  and  power  in  exercise.  He  has  a  quick  sense  ever  of 
the  zest  of  our  animal  life  of  body  and  senses  when  it  is 
full  and  healthy.  Where  is  there  a  better  expression  of  the 
joy  of  life  than  in  those  bounding  lines  the  shepherd  boy, 
David,  sings  to  the  despondent  Saul? 

"Oh,  our  manhood's  prime  vigor!     No  spirit  feels  waste, 
Not  a  muscle  is  stopped  in  its  playing  nor  sinew  unbraced. 
Oh,  the  wild  joys  of  living!  the  leaping  from  rock  up  to  rock, 
The  strong  rending  of  boughs  from  the  fir-tree,  the  cool  silver  shock 
Of  the  plunge  in  a  pool's  living  water,  the  hunt  of  the  bear, 
And  the  sultriness  showing  the  lion  is  couched  in  his  lair. 
And  the  meal,  the  rich  dates  yellowed  over  with  gold  dust  divine, 
And  the  locust-flesh  steeped  in  the  pitcher,  the  full  draught  of  wine, 
And  the  sleep  in  the  dried  river-channel  where  bulrushes  tell 
That  the  water  was  wont  to  go  warbling  so  softly  and  well. 
How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living!  how  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  6cnscs  forever  in  joy!" 


3H  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

In  some  of  Browning's  most  admirable  studies  of  char- 
acter we  see  this  vigorous  physical  life  bursting  out  in  revolt 
and  waywardness  from  under  the  unnatural  restraints  and 
conventions  imposed  upon  it.  There  is  Fra  Lippo,  for  ex- 
ample,— a  ruddy,  full-blooded  nature,  sensuous  but  not  gross, 
and  with  the  artist's  quick  full  feeling  of  the  beauty  and  life 
of  the  world.  And  by  sad  misfortune,  when  he  was  eight 
years  old,  they  had  clapped  him  into  a  monastery.  All  the 
man,  the  painter,  the  poet  in  him  they  tried  to  cool  and 
narrow  into  the  mere  monk,— and  of  course  they  couldn't. 
One  bright  night,  you  remember,  he  has  been  out  on  a  frolic 
not  quite  becoming  the  cowl  and  tonsure  and  is  just  slipping 
quietly  back  to  get  a  little  sleep  before  he  begins  painting 
in  the  morning  again  on  St.  Jerome, 

.  .  .  knocking   at  his   poor  old   breast 

With  his  great  round  stone  to  subdue  the  flesh, 

when  he  is  suddenly  snapped  up  by  the  police.  With  ready 
assurance,  however,  he  makes  friends  with  his  captors,  and 
in  confidence  tells  them  the  story  of  his  life, — how,  in  some 
way  almost  unknown  to  himself,  he  had  when  a  mere  boy 
begun  to  daub  pictures  on  the  wall  of  the  cloister,  monks 
first,  then  folks  at  church,  men  and  lastly  women — the 
Prior's  niece — too,  just  as  God  made  them,  till  one  day  the 
Prior  looked  in  and  stopped  all  that  in  no  time : 

I  painted  all,  then  cried,  "  'T  is  ask  and  have; 
Choose,  for  more's  ready!" — laid  the  ladder  flat, 
And  showed  my  covered  bit  of  cloister-wall. 
The  monks  closed  in  a  circle  and  praised  loud 
Till  checked,  taught  what  to  see  and  not  to  see, 
Being  simple  bodies, — "That's  the  very  man ! 
Look  at  the  boy  who  stoops  to  pat  the  dog! 
That  woman  's  like  the  Prior's  niece  who  comes 
To  care  about  his  asthma:  it's  the  life!" 
But  there  my  triumph's  straw-fire  flared  and  funked ; 
Their  betters  took  their  turn  to  see  and  say: 
The  Prior  and  the  learned  pulled  a  face 
And  stopped  all  that  in  no  time.    "How?  what's  here? 
Quite  from  the  mark  of  painting,  bless  us  all! 
Faces,  arms,  legs,  and  bodies  like  the  true 


BROWNING  315 

As  much  as  pea  and  pea!  it's  devil's  game! 

Your  business  is  not  to  catch  men  with  show, 

With  homage  to  the  perishable  clay, 

But  lift  them  over  it,  ignore  it  all, 

Make  them  forget  there's  such  a  thing  as  flesh. 

Your  business  is  to  paint  the  souls  of  men — 

Man's  soul,  and  it's  a  fire,  smoke  .  .  .  no,  it's  not  .  .  . 

It's  vapor  done  up  like  a  new-born  babe — 

(In  that  shape  when  you  die  it  leaves  your  mouth) 

It's  .  .  .  well,  what  matters  talking,  it's  the  soul ! 

Give  us  no  more  of  body  than  shows  soul ! 

Paint  the  soul,  never  mind  the  legs  and  arms! 
Rub  all  out,  try  at  it  a  second  time." 

.  .  .   Now,  is  this  sense,  I  ask? 
A  fine  way  to  paint  soul,  by  painting  body 
So  ill,  the  eye  can't  stop  there,  must  go  further 
And  can't  fare  worse!  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Take  the  prettiest   face, 
The  Prior's  niece  .  .  .  patron-saint — is  it  so  pretty 
You  can't  discover  if  it  means  hope,  fear, 
Sorrow  or  joy?  won't  beauty  go  with  these? 
Suppose  I've  made  her  eyes  all  right  and  blue, 
Can't  I  take  breath  and  try  to  add  life's  flash, 
And  then  add  soul  and  heighten  them  threefold? 
Or  say  there's  beauty  with  no  soul  at  all — 
(I  never  saw  it — put  the  case  the  same — ) 
If  you  get  simple  beauty  and  nought  else, 
You  get  about  the  best  thing  God  invents: 
That's  somewhat:  and  you'll  find  the  soul  you  have  missed, 
Within  yourself,  when  you  return  him  thanks. 
"Rub  all  out!"     Well,  well,  there's  my  life,  in  short, 
And  so  the  thing  has  gone  on  ever  since. 
I'm  grown  a  man  no  doubt,  I've  broken  bounds: 
You  should  not  take  a  fellow  eight  years  old 
And  make  him  swear  to  never  kiss  the  girls. 
I'm  my  own  master,  paint  now  as  I  please — 

•  •••••••• 

And  yet  the  old  schooling  sticks,  the  old  grave  eyes 

Are  peeping  o'er  my  shoulder  as  I  work, 

The  heads  shake  still — "It's  art's  decline,  my  son! 

You're  not  of  the  true  painters,  great  and  old; 

Brother  Angelico's  the  man,  you'll  find; 

Brother  Lorenzo  stands  his  single  peer: 

F»g  on  at  flesh,  you'll  never  make  the  third  I" 


316  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Flower  o'  the  pine, 

You  keep  your  mistr  .  .  .  manners,  and  I'll  stick  to  mine! 

I'm  not  the  third,  then:  bless  us,  they  must  know! 

Don't  you  think  they're  the  likeliest  to  know, 

They  with  their  Latin?     So,  I  swallow  my  rage, 

Clench  my  teeth,  suck  my  lips  in  tight,  and  paint 

To  please  them — sometimes  do,  and  sometimes  don't; 

For,  doing  most,  there's  pretty  sure  to  come 

A  turn,  some  warm  eve  finds  me  at  my  saints — 

A  laugh,  a  cry,  the  business  of  the  world — 

(Flower  o'  the  peach, 

Death  for  us  all,  and  his  own  life  for  each!) 

And  my  whole  soul  revolves,  the  cup  runs  over, 

The  world  and  life's  too  big  to  pass  for  a  dream, 

And  I  do  these  wild  things  in  sheer  despite, 

And  play  the  fooleries  you  catch  me  at, 

In  pure  rage !    The  old  mill-horse,  out  at  grass 

After  hard  years,  throws  up  his  stiff  heels  so, 

Although  the  miller  does  not  preach  to  him 

The  only  good  of  grass  is  to  make  chaff. 

Now  in  these  lines  you  have  not  only  a  very  live  man 
indeed,  but  you  have  the  whole  protest  of  the  Renaissance 
against  the  Middle  Ages,  done  in  little. 

Cries  Fra  Lippo,  as  he  thinks  of  what  is  possible  to  art, — 

Oh,  oh, 
It  makes  me  mad  to  see  what  men  shall  do 
And  we  in  our  graves!    This  world's  no  blot  for  us, 
Nor  blank;  it  means  intensely,  and  means  good: 
To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink. 

These  last  lines  might  be  taken  as  a  motto  for  all  Brown- 
ing's work: 

'This  world — it  means  intensely  and  it  means  good: 
To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink.' 

For  the  ends  of  life,  in  Browning's  thought,  are  to  be 
reached  not  principally  by  self-control,  by  wise  restraint  and 
temperate  acquiescence,  but  rather  by  unsated  curiosity, 
unending  desire  and  aspiration. 

So,  too,  it  sometimes  seems  that  Browning  is  in  love  with 


BROWNING  317 

vigor  of  any  sort,  good  or  bad.  And  he  does  have  a  certain 
sympathy  with  all  action;  even  the  superficial  bustle  of  life, 
the  noise  and  dust  of  it,  I  think,  had  a  certain  attraction  for 
him.  They  were  better  than  stillness  and  apathy.  He 
could  understand  those  people  who  like  the  blaze  and  blare 
and  are  emulous  of  the  drum  major's  place  in  the  human 
procession.  "Oh  dear,"  sighs  his  Italian  noble,  penned  up 
in  a  lonely  villa  on  the  slopes  of  the  mountain, — 

Had  I  but  plenty  of  money,  money  enough  and  to  spare, 
The  house  for  me,  no  doubt,  were  a  house  in  the  city-square; 
Ah,  such  a  life,  such  a  life,  as  one  leads  at  the  window  there! 

Look,  two  and  two  go  the  priests,  then  the  monks  with  cowls  and 

sandals, 
And    the    penitents    dressed    in    white    shirts,    a-holding   the   yellow 

candles; 
One,  he  carries  a  flag  up  straight,  and  another  a  cross  with  handles, 
And  the  Duke's  guard  brings  up  the  rear,  for  the  better  prevention 

of  scandals: 
Bang-iuhang-ivhang  goes  the  drum,  tootle-te-tootle  the  fife. 
Oh,  a  day  in  the  city-square,  there  is  no  such  pleasure  in  life! 

So  Browning  has  a  few  of  the  most  stirring  lyrics  of  ac- 
tion written  in  this  century, — poems  of  daring  or  adventure, 
like  Herve  Rielf  or  How  They  Brought  the  Good  News 
from  Ghent  to  Aixt  or  Pheidippides.     He  had  the  genuine 
English  love  of  brawn  and  grit.    He  loved  to  see  all  a  man's 
powers  put  on  a  stretch,  loved  to  see  how  the  whole  nature 
rises  to  the  strain  of  a  great  emergency.     This  liking  was 
strong  in  him  to  the  end,  and  some  of  his  most  rousing  lyrics 
are  sandwiched  between  the  casuistry  of  his  latest  volumes. 
But,  after  all,  it  wasn't  merely  the  action  that  Browning 
cared  for.   You  will  find  that  for  the  most  part,  the  charm  of 
his  narrative  poetry  does  not  reside,  as  that  of  Scott  does, 
in  the  mere  picture  of  vigorous,  healthy,  external  life,  the 
joy  of  doing  brave  things  in  the  fresh  air,  but  rather  in  the 
inner   force   of  character   which    the    action   reveals.      The 
secret  of  his  love  of  action  lay  in  his  conviction  that  in  action 
only   can    the    soul    get   scope    and    strength.      Not   in    any 
asceticisms,  not  in  retirement  and  reflection,  but  in  the  throng 


3i 8  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  press  of  men,  in  wrestle  with  all  life's  problems  and 
life's  evils  do  we  prove  what  we  are  made  of,  and  find  what 
we  are  made  for. 

Here  is  Browning's  greatest  power, — in  the  realm  of 
emotion  and  passion.     Lovers  of  Browning  can  claim  with- 
out fear  of  denial  that  no  other  poet  of  the  last  generation 
has  so  often  shown  us  the  soul  rapt  into  passionate  ardors, 
aglow  with  noble  emotion.     With  noble  emotion,   I  say; 
for  the  passion  of  Browning's  verse  is  not  fleshly  but  spirit- 
ual; nor  is  it  violent,  for  violence  is  always  a  proof  of  weak- 
ness, but  strong,  deep,  and  sane.     And,  furthermore,  you 
will  find  Browning  does  not  often  merely  exhibit  passion 
or  emotion  for  its  own  sake  as  a  kind  of  spectacle, — as 
our  modern  realists  do.    He  wasn't  of  that  school  of  writers 
who,  thinking  with  Jaques  that  all  the  world's  a  stage  and 
all  the  men  and  women  merely  players,  deem  it  the  province 
of  literature  to  make  of  the  pains  and  joys  of  human  life 
a  thrilling  show.     In  Browning's  work  there  is  always  a 
certain  ethical  suggestiveness.     Even  where  the  passion  of 
his  men  and  women  is  most  intense,  it  still  turns  our  thought 
upon  the  truths  of  character  and  conduct.     On  reflection  we 
find  that  his  best  poems  are  a  study  of  the  relation  of  emo- 
tion to  the  ends  of  life.    At  the  bottom  of  his  lyrics  we  find, 
not  as  in  most  poetry  a  sentiment,  but  a  truth.     In  fact 
emotion,  I  think,  is  always  most  interesting  to  Browning 
when  it  sets  at  work  questioning  or  speculation,  and  heats 
the  intellect  into  unwonted  subtlety  and  power.     There  is 
no  more  wonderful  picture  of  passionate   desperation  in 
Browning  than  that  of  the  villain,  Guido,  in  The  Ring  and 
the  Book;  it  is  a  revelation  of  swiftness  and  agility  of  intel- 
lectual movement,  of  a  venomous  keenness  of  suggestion,  of 
devilish  subtlety,  such  as  almost  takes  your  breath  away :  yet 
you  can't  tell  which  to  wonder  at  most,  the  power  of  intellect 
or  the  force  of  concentrated  passion  that  seethes  beneath 
the  intellect.     In  Browning's  later  work,  as  we  know,  the 
intellectual  interest  got  the  upper  hand;  in  his  zeal  to  in- 
terpret life,  he  lost  the  power  to  portray  it.    Yet  even  in  the 
most  super-subtilized  work  of  his  later  period,  like  Fifine  at 


BROWNING  319 

the  Fair,  the  labyrinth  of  casuistry  rests  on  a  basis  of  feel- 
ing. But  in  the  work,  of  his  best  time,  when  intellect  and 
emotion  are  in  healthy  balance,  we  find  superb  examples  of 
the  charm  of  a  rich  and  healthy  emotion.  For  Browning 
had  no  distrust  of  the  passions.  He  wasn't  afraid  of  them. 
He  didn't  believe,  as  some  good  folks  seem  to,  that  our 
passions  are  given  us  merely  to  test  our  ability  to  sit  down 
on  them  and  keep  them  under.  The  emotions,  as  their  name 
implies,  are  the  motive  power  of  life,  and  no  large,  efficient 
life  is  possible  without  a  full  and  strong  emotional  nature. 
Indeed,  deep  and  absorbing  emotion,  if  it  be  healthy,  is 
itself  one  of  the  ends  of  life.  Better  an  hour  of  entire  sur- 
render to  a  noble  joy  than  years  of  sluggish  bondage  to 
convention  and  commonplace.  Browning  has  a  whole  group 
of  poems  that  illustrate  this.  Take  for  instance  The  Last 
Ride  Together.  What  fate  must  sever  this  lover  from  his 
lady  in  the  future  we  know  not,  nor  need  to  know;  for  this 
hour  at  least  she  is  his,  and  that  is  enough: 

I  said — Then,  dearest,  since  't  is  so, 
Since  now  at  length  my  fate  I  know, 
Since  nothing  all  my  love  avails, 
Since  all,  my  life  seemed  meant  for,  fails, 

Since  this  was  written  and  needs  must  be — 
My  whole  heart  rises  up  to  bless 
Your  name  in  pride  and  thankfulness! 
Take  back  the  hope  you  gave, — I  claim 
Only  a  memory  of  the  same, 
— And  this  beside,  if  you  will  not  blame, 

Your  leave  for  one  more  last  ride  with  me. 

•  ••••••• 

Hush,  if  you  saw  some  western  cloud 

All  billowy-bosomed,  over-bowed 

By  many  benedictions — sun's 

And  moon's,  and  evening-star's  at  once — 

And  so,  you,  looking  and  loving  best, 
Conscious   grew,   your    passion    drew 
Cloud,  sunset,  moonrise,  star-shine  too, 
Down  on  you,  near  and  yet  more  near, 
Till  flesh  must  fade  for  heaven  was  here! — 
Thus  leant  she  and  lingered — joy  and  fear! 

Thus  lay  she  a  moment  on  my  breast. 


32o  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Then  we  began  to  ride.     My  soul 
Smoothed  itself  out,  a  long-cramped  scroll 
Freshening  and  fluttering  in  the  wind. 
Past  hopes  already  lay  behind. 

What  need  to  strive  with  a  life  awry? 
Had  I  said  that,  had  I  done  this, 
So  might  I  gain,  so  might  I  miss. 
Might  she  have  loved  me?  just  as  well 
She  might  have  hated,  who  can  tell ! 
Where  had  I  been  now  if  the  worst  befell  ? 

And  here  we  are  riding,  she  and  I. 

Fail  I  alone,  in  words  and  deeds? 
Why,  all  men  strive,  and  who  succeeds? 
We  rode;  it  seemed  my  spirit  flew, 
Saw  other  regions,  cities  new, 

As  the  world  rushed  by  on  either  side. 
I  thought, — All  labor,  yet  no  less 
Bear  up  beneath  their  unsuccess. 
Look  at  the  end  of  work,  contrast 
The  petty  done,  the  undone  vast, 
This  present  of  theirs  with  the  hopeful  past! 

I  hoped  she  would  love  me;  here  we  ride. 

•  ••••••• 

What  does  it  all  mean,  poet?     Well, 
Your  brains  beat  into  rhythm,  you  tell 
What  we  felt  only;  you  expressed 
You  hold  things  beautiful  the  best, 

And  place  them  in  rhyme  so,  side  by  side. 
'T  is  something,  nay  't  is  much:  but  then, 
Have  you  yourself  what's  best  for  men? 
Are  you — poor,  sick,  old  ere  your  time — 
Nearer  one  whit  your  own  sublime 
Than  we  who  never  have  turned  a  rhyme? 

Sing,  riding's  a  joy!     For  me,  I  ride. 

In  these  sweeping  lines  there  is  little  thought  of  anything 
besides  the  joy  of  entire  abandonment  to  an  emotion  which 
seems  for  the  hour  worth  all  the  world.  But  Browning  is 
constantly  reminding  us  that  in  such  hours  of  supreme  emo- 
tion there  is  often  a  distinctively  moral  value.  It  is  when 
we  get  the  uplift  of  some  such  spiritual  elevation  that  we 
see  the  truth  most  clearly;  above  all,  it  is  in  some  such  heat 
of  soul  that  we  gain  the  intensity  of  conviction  needed  for 


BROWNING  321 

an  earnest,  strenuous  life.  For,  in  Browning's  philosophy  of 
life,  failure  comes  oftenest  from  inertia,  from  selfish  pru- 
dence, from  a  lack  of  impassioned  devotion  to  ideal  ends. 
We  accommodate  ourselves;  we  shrink  before  life's  ob- 
stacles; we  grow  feeble  and  lukewarm;  and  then  we  lose 
the  zest  of  life,  and — what  is  worse — fail  to  realize  its  best 
possibilities.  But  there  are  glorious  moments  when  we  are 
caught  up  out  of  the  ways  of  use  and  wont  and  see  life  in 
the  light  of  some  noble  passion.  It  is  then  that  the  soul 
learns  its  reach,  finds  what  it  is  to  be  alive,  and  gets  a  sense 
of  infinite  possibilities.  These  luminous  points  lighten  all 
the  lower  ranges  of  our  life. 

Oh,  we're  sunk  enough  here,  God  knows! 

But  not  quite  so  sunk  that  moments, 
Sure  though  seldom,  are  denied  us, 

When  the  spirit's  true  endowments 
Stand  out  plainly  from  its  false  ones, 

And  apprise  it  if  pursuing 
Or  the  right  way  or  the  wrong  way, 

To  its  triumph  or  undoing. 

Again  and  again  in  the  lives  of  Browning's  men  and  women 
do  we  find  these  impassioned  moments,  when  emotion  be- 
comes revelation  and  inspiration, — flashes  supreme  truth 
upon  the  conviction,  or  energizes  the  resolve  for  a  lifetime. 
I  can  remind  you  of  but  one  instance — that  of  Caponsacchi, 
the  priest  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  I  must  not  read  at 
length  from  his  monologue,  but  most  of  you  will  remember 
it, — once  read  it  is  an  unforgetable  thing.  You  remember 
how  this  idle  and  gilded  priest  toying  with  the  pretty  sins  of 
life  suddenly  sees  one  evening  the  face  of  Pompilia, — 

A  lady,  young,  tall,  beautiful,  strange  and  sad. 

It  was  as  when,  in  our  cathedral  once, 

As  I  got  yawningly  through  matin-song, 

I  saw  facchini  bear  a  burden  up, 

Base  it  on  the  high-altar,  break  away 

A  board  or  two,  and  leave  the  thing  inside 

Lofty  and  lone:  and  lo,  when  next  I  looked, 

There  was  the  Rafael ! 


322  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

In  the  revelation  of  that  glance,  his  past  life  seems  a  vain 
and  wicked  thing. 

What  if  I  turned  Christian?     It  might  be! 

And  you  remember  how  twice  again  there  come  exalted  mo- 
ments when  he  brushes  away  the  tangle  of  deceits  his  ene- 
mies have  woven  about  Pompilia  and  himself,  looks  straight 
through  all  his  doubts  about  mere  priestly  properties,  and 
sees  his  duty  as  a  man  and  servant  of  God.  They  were  the 
moments  that  made  his  life. 

I  know  it  is  sometimes  said  that  Browning  glorifies 
impulse  too  much.  They  tell  us  he  can  pardon  anything  to 
force.  Perhaps  the  needful  but  less  inspiring  virtues  of 
prudence  and  self-command  hardly  get  their  rights  in  his 
verse;  but  I  do  not  think  that  Browning  in  his  love  of 
power  ever  forgets  virtue.  What  is  true,  however,  is  that 
he  admires  an  active  sinner  more  than  a  passive  one.  The 
hopeless  character,  in  his  view,  is  that  which  hasn't  personal 
force  enough  to  make  either  vice  or  virtue  out  of.  That 
is  the  lesson  of  that  poem  the  moralists  are  most  troubled 
by,  The  Statue  and  the  Bust.  It  is  the  story  of  a  lady  who 
sat  at  her  window  in  Florence  and  watched  the  Duke  ride  by 
in  the  square  below.  The  lady  was  the  bride  of  one  of  the 
hard  and  cruel  Riccardi;  the  Duke,  he  for  aught  I  know 
was  married  too.  But  even  in  the  first  glance  each  formed 
the  resolve  to  burst  all  bonds  of  convention,  nay  of  virtue,. 
for  each  other's  sake.    Said  the  lady  to  herself, — 

"If  I  spend  the  night  with  that  devil  twice, 
May  his  window  serve  as  my  loop  of  hell 
Whence  a  damned  soul  looks  on  paradise!" 

Said  the  Duke  to  himself, — 

"Dear  or  cheap 
As  the  cost  of  this  cup  of  bliss  may  prove 
To  body  or  soul,  I  will  drain  it  deep." 

But  to-day  some  petty  business  hinders,  and  to-morrow,  and 
to-morrow ;  and  the  years  go  past  until  the  lady  wakes  to  find 
her  beauty  fled,  and  calls  Delia  Robbia  to  carve  her  bust  in 


BROWNING  3*3 

the  window  where  she  used  to  look,  and  the  Duke  finds  his 
passion  faded  to  a  memory,  and  calls  John  of  Douay  to  set 
his  statue  in  the  square  where  he  used  to  ride, — memorials 
both,  statue  and  bust,  of  a  purpose,  resolved  again  and 
again,  never  repented,  yet  never  fulfilled. 
And  now  soliloquizes  Browning: 

Let  a  man  contend  to  the  uttermost 

For  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it  will! 

The  counter  our  lovers  staked  was  lost 

As  surely  as  if  it  were  lawful  coin : 

And  the  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 

Is — the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin, 
Though  the  end  in  sight  was  a  vice,  I  say. 

Browning  is  putting  the  extreme  case,  and  as  is  usual  when 
people  do  that,  I  think,  rather  overdoes  it.  Yet  we  have 
the  best  of  authority  for  saying  there  is  no  virtue  in  the 
weak  delay  that  postpones  a  sin  already  committed  in  the 
heart;  and  Browning  is  further  right  in  thinking  that  this 
forceless  temper  leaves  the  soul  an  easy  prey  to  every  as- 
sault, and  sinks  it  below  all  achievement.  Only  noble  aspira- 
tion can  lift  the  man  above  the  fogs  of  lower  life  where  he 
may  see  those  truths  that  beckon  and  allure;  only  the  strenu- 
ous soul  whose  righteousness  exceeds  that  of  the  scribes  and 
pharisees  may  attain  to  the  sight  of  God  and 

all  that  chivalry  of  his, 
The  soldier-saints  who,  row  on  row, 
Burn  upward  each  to  his  point  of  bliss. 

If  I  have  succeeded  in  making  at  all  clear  what  I  deem 
the  essential  characteristics  of  all  Browning's  poetry,  I  need 
say  little  of  its  value.  It  is  a  spiritual  tonic.  When  at  its 
best,  it  combines  force  of  passion  with  depth  of  thought  as 
hardly  any  other  poetry  since  the  Elizabethan  days,  and 
has  the  power  of  that  large  elder  verse  to  inspire  and  dilate. 
It  can  never  be  genuinely  popular.  It  has  too  little  of 
sensuous  beauty  for  that,  is  too  careless  of  the  obvious  and 
superficial  interests  of  life,  too  deeply  freighted  with  the  les- 


324  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

sons  of  experience.  For  the  same  reasons,  it  must  always 
be  especially  the  poetry  of  middle  life.  Browning,  I  suspect, 
will  never  get  the  ear  of  sweet  sixteen.  He  didn't  care  to. 
The  simple  charm  of  inexperienced  youth  you  seldom  find 
in  his  verse,  and  when  you  do,  it  is  generally  with  some  hint 
of  its  slightness  or  transiency: 

By  a  cornfield-side,  a-flutter  with  poppies. 
Hark,  those  two  in  the  hazel  coppice — 
A  boy  and  a  girl,  if  the  good  fates  please, 

Making  love,  say — 

The  happier  they! 
Draw  yourself  up  from  the  light  of  the  moon, 
And  let  them  pass — as  they  will  too  soon, 

With  the  beanflowers'  boon, 

And  the  blackbird's  tune, 

And  May,  and  June! 

Youth  is  the  bright  frontispiece  of  life;  but  our  main  interest 
is  in  the  book  itself.  Ogniben,  in  A  Soul's  Tragedy — one  of 
the  shrewdest,  most  original  characters  Browning  ever  drew 
— says  with  quiet  irony,  "Youth,  with  its  beauty  and  grace, 
would  seem  bestowed  on  us  for  some  such  reason  as  to 
make  us  partly  endurable  till  we  have  time  for  really  becom- 
ing so  of  ourselves,  without  their  aid;  when  they  leave  us." 
But  Browning  is  the  only  poet  I  know  who  can  really  recon- 
cile one  to  growing  old.  We  know  what  the  usual  poetic 
tone  is  toward  old  age,  the  tone  of  regret,  or  at  best  of 
resignation, — 

The  foot  less  prompt  to  meet  the  morning  dew 
The  heart  less  bounding  to  emotion  new. 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  another  kind  of  poetry  of  old  age,  the 
poetry  of  sentimental  retrospect,  such  as  John  Anderson  My 
Jo,  and  The  Miller's  Daughter.  But  this  is  a  sham — it 
is  all  written  by  young  men.  Whenever  you  come  upon 
verse  of  that  sort,  be  assured  the  writer  is  not  turned  of 
thirty.  The  really  old  people  know  better.  They  feel  that 
no  philosophy  of  life's  afternoon  can  atone  for  the  faded 
poetry  of  its  morning.     But  Browning,  I  verily  believe,  is 


BROWNING  325 

the  one  poet  who  thoroughly  knows  how  to  grow  old.  He 
has  the  wealth  of  ripened  experience,  but  he  keeps  also 
the  bounding  life  and  eager,  forward-looking  hopes  of  youth. 
All  seasons  meet  in  him.  He  reaps  the  harvests  of  life's 
autumn,  but  he  has  still  in  his  heart  the  joys  of  its  spring. 
For  myself,  of  later  years,  when  I  have  a  birthday  1  read 
the  only  modern  poem  I  know  that  is  really  helpful  on  such 
occasions,  Robert  Browning's  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra.  Let  me 
close  by  reading  its  opening  and  closing  stanzas  that  show 
how  Robert  Browning  welcomed  the  swift-coming  years: 

Grow  old  along  with  me! 

The  best  is  yet  to  be, 
The  last  of  life,  for  which  the  first  was  made: 

Our  times  are  in  his  hand 

Who  saith,  "A  whole  I  planned, 
Youth  shows  but  half;  trust  God:  see  all,  nor  be  afraid!" 

So,  take  and  use  thy  work: 

Amend  what  flaws  may  lurk, 
What  strain  o'  the  stuff,  what  warpings  past  the  aim ! 

My  times  be  in  thy  hand ! 

Perfect  the  cup  as  planned! 
Let  age  approve  of  youth,  and  death  complete  the  same! 


ART,  LOVE,  AND  RELIGION  IN  THE  POETRY  OF 

ROBERT  BROWNING 


AMONG  the  many  pleasant  anecdotes  of  Mr.  Brown- 
ing that  have  been  told  since  his  death  is  one  to  the 
effect  that  a  very  young  lady  who  had  just  been  in- 
troduced to  him  one  evening  in  London  and  who  evidently 
had  little  knowledge  of  his  poetry,  said  to  the  great  man 
somewhat  timidly,  "I  don't  know  whether  you  care  for 
music,   Mr.   Browning,   but  if  you  do,   my  mother,   Lady 

J ,  is  having  some  on  Monday."   "Why,  my  dear  1"  said 

Browning  with  the  hearty  sympathetic  manner  so  character- 
istic of  him,  "Care  for  music?    I  care  for  nothing  else." 

The  love  of  music  was  born  in  him.  Very  likely  he  in- 
herited it,  with  the  romantic  emotional  strain  in  his  blood, 
from  his  maternal  grandmother,  who  was  a  Creole,  born 
in  the  West  Indies.  With  Browning's  own  mother  also, 
a  woman  of  great  depth  of  feeling,  music  was  a  passion. 
Mr.  Sharp  in  his  Life  of  Browning  tells  a  pretty  story  of 
the  childhood  of  the  poet.  One  afternoon  his  mother  was 
playing  in  the  dusk  of  twilight  to  herself,  when  she  was 
startled  by  a  sound  behind  her.  Glancing  round,  she  beheld 
a  little  white  figure  distinct  against  an  oak  bookcase,  and 
could  just  discern  two  large,  wistful  eyes  looking  earnestly 
at  her.  The  next  moment  the  child  had  sprung  into  her 
arms,  sobbing  passionately  at  he  knew  not  what,  but,  as  his 
pangs  of  emotion  subsided,  whispering  over  and  over,  with 
shy  urgency,  "Play!  Playl"  Those  evening  hours  of  his 
mother's — happy  hours  of  darkness,  solitude,  and  music — 
were  among  the  tenderest  lifelong  memories  of  Browning. 
Every  reader  of  his  poetry  knows  what  manifold  proof  of 

326 


BROWNING  327 

his  love  of  music  there  is  in  every  volume;  and  the  musicians 
say  that  such  poems  as  A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's,  or  Master 
Hugius  of  Saxe-Gotha,  or  Abt  Vogler  betray  considerable 
technical  knowledge  of  the  art.  Certainly  such  poems  are 
remarkable  examples  of  Browning's  power  to  interpret  the 
spirit  and  meaning  of  music.  I  have  sometimes  thought 
it  singular  that  with  his  keen  susceptibility  to  the  charm  of 
music,  Browning's  own  faculty  of  poetic  utterance  should 
have  had  so  little  musical  quality, — at  all  events,  so  little 
clear  and  haunting  melody. 

But  I  don't  know  that  Browning's  love  for  music  was 
any  deeper  than  his  love  for  painting,  indeed  for  all  kinds 
of  art.  No  modern  poet,  I  suppose,  had  such  an  eager  and 
intelligent  interest  in  all  forms  of  art.  It  isn't  merely  that 
he  has  a  large  group  of  poems  dealing  exclusively  with  art 
or  artists,  though  there  are  more  than  a  score  of  such  poems, 
— Fra  Lippo,  Andrea  del  Sarto,  Pictor  Ignotus,  Old 
Pictures  in  Florence,  The  Guardian-Angel,  Abt  Vogler,  A 
Toccata  of  Galuppi's  and  the  rest;  it  is  rather  that  almost 
all  his  best  work  is  saturated  with  the  history  and  the  spirit 
of  art.  Most  of  his  life  was  passed  in  Italy,  and  of  all  the 
many  English  poet-lovers  of  Italy,  he  loved  her  most. 

Italy,  my  Italy ! 

Queen  Mary's  saying  serves  for  me — 

(When  fortune's  malice 

Lost  her,  Calais) 
Open  my  heart  and  you  will  see 
Graved  inside  of  it,  "Italy." 
Such  lovers  old  are  I  and  she: 
So  it  always  was,  so  ever  shall  be! 

Yet  it  wasn't  chiefly  her  history  that  Browning  cared  for. 
The  Italy  he  loved  was  not  the  great  past  Italy  that  holds 
the  memories  of  the  world.  It  was  rather  the  artist's  Italy 
that  captivated  him,  I  think.  He  loved  his  Italy  not  so  much 
because  of  its  august  historical  associations  with  the  early 
world,  as  because  there,  at  every  turn,  in  every  square,  in 
every  dim  and  shabby  church,  you  might  come  upon  some 
statue,  tomb,  fresco,  painting, — some  effort  of  man  to  ex- 


328  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

press  himself  in  art.  He  knew  the  history  of  the  early 
Christian  painters  a  good  deal  better,  I  suspect,  than  the 
history  of  the  early  Roman  emperors.  His  longer  poems, 
like  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  are  full  of  traces  of  minute  and 
loving  study  of  the  art  of  Italy;  while  in  all  the  score  of 
volumes  he  wrote  during  his  life  in  Italy,  I  doubt  whether 
there  is  a  single  passage  expressive  of  that  solemn  sense  of 
the  irrevocable  past,  that  broad  feeling  for  the  general  life 
of  man,  which  Scott  and  Byron  felt  so  keenly.  The  historic 
sense  was  very  feeble  in  Browning.  The  rise  and  fall  of 
states,  the  social  life  of  man  as  embodied  in  institutions,  the 
broad  movements  of  men  in  the  mass,  political  or  military, 
— these  things  which  loom  so  large  on  the  pages  of  history, 
Browning  didn't  care  for.  He  didn't  think  of  them.  His 
interest  was  not  in  man,  but  in  individual  men  and  women. 
And  that  is  the  reason  why  he  cared  so  much  for  art.  For 
art  is  the  only  way  the  individual  has  of  perpetuating  his 
personality.  Art  to  Browning  means  always  the  expression 
of  spiritual  aspiration,  the  effort  of  the  individual  after 
larger  and  higher  life.  It  is  the  record  of  our  continual 
strivings  after  an  ideal  we  can  never  fully  attain.  Not  to 
copy,  though  never  so  accurately,  the  beauty  that  the  eye 
may  see,  but  to  reveal,  even  to  suggest,  inadequately,  but 
with  ever  repeated  effort,  some  higher  beauty,  some  divine 
truth, — this  is  the  work  of  art. 

It  was  natural  that  with  these  views  Browning  should 
care  little  for  technical  excellence.  In  the  poem,  Old  Pic- 
tures in  Florence,  he  expresses  a  most  emphatic  preference 
for  the  crudest  work  of  the  early  Christian  painters  over  the 
most  perfect  statue  Greek  chisel  ever  cut.  And  that  because 
while  the  statue  is  the  skillful  embodiment  of  a  complete, 
self-sufficient  beauty,  in  the  pictures  the  artist  is  struggling, 
albeit  in  rude  and  untaught  fashion,  to  utter  his  soul,  to 
express  the  invisible  things  of  God : 

On  which  I  conclude,  that  the  early  painters, 

To  cries  of  "Greek  Art  and  what  more  wish  you  ?" — 

Replied,  "To  become  now  self-acquainters, 
And  paint  man  man,  whatever  the  issue! 


BROWNING  329 

Make  new  hopes  shine  through  the  flesh  they  fray, 
New  fears  aggrandize  the  rags  and  tatters: 

To  bring  the  invisible  full  into  play! 

Let  the  visible  go  to  the  dogs — what  matters?" 

Indeed  complete  technical  excellence  would  seem  to 
Browning  to  indicate  some  deficiency  of  soul.  If  the  hand 
can  execute  perfectly  all  that  the  imagination  can  conceive, 
it  is  a  proof  that  the  imagination  has  little  sight  of  the 
highest  things;  that  the  artist  is  losing  that  temper  of  ideal 
aspiration  in  which  alone  is  the  salvation  of  the  man.  The 
saddest  failure  is  that  of  him  who  feels  that  he  has  consum- 
mate skill,  but  no  vision.  This  is  the  pathos  of  that  poem  I 
sometimes  think  the  most  pathetic  Browning  ever  wrote, 
the  Andrea  del  Sarto.  Andrea  is  the  faultless  painter.  His 
unerring  pencil  can  mend  the  lines  of  Raphael  himself.  Yet 
as  he  sits  by  his  window  in  the  hush  of  twilight  and  looks 
backward  over  his  life,  he  knows  that  life  a  failure.  In  his 
heart  he  knows  that  the  great  artists  are  not  those  who 
skillfully  execute  but  those  who  greatly  conceive;  that  suc- 
cess consists  not  in  doing  perfectly  what  you  undertake,  but 
rather  in  nobly  daring  more  than  any  man  can  perfectly 
attain; 

a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 
— Or  what's  a  heaven  for? 

I  hardly  recall  any  picture  in  modern  poetry  more  saddening. 
And  it  is  conceived  with  vivid  dramatic  truth;  in  the  tone  of 
the  man's  speech,  in  the  very  atmosphere  of  that  still,  gray 
evening  that  hangs  upon  the  slopes  of  Fiesoli,  there  is  some- 
thing listless,  hopeless.  It  is  his  wife,  you  remember,  to 
whom  he  is  speaking: 

I  often  am  much  wearier  than  you  think, 
This  cvrning  more  than  usual,  and  it  seems 
As  if — forgive  now — should  you  let  me  sit 
Here  by  the  window  with  your  hand  in  mine 
And  look  a  half-hour  forth  on  Fiesole, 
Both  of  one  mind,  as  married  people  use, 
Quietly,  quietly  the  evening  through, 


330  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

I  might  get  up  to-morrow  to  my  work, 
Cheerful  and  fresh  as  ever.    Let  us  try. 

•  ••••••• 

A  common  grayness  silvers  everything, — 

All  in  a  twilight,  you  and  I  alike 

— You,  at  the  point  of  your  first  pride  in  me 

(That's  gone  you  know), — but  I,  at  every  point; 

My  youth,  my  hope,  my  art,  being  all  toned  down 

To  yonder  sober  pleasant  Fiesole. 

There's  the  bell  clinking  from  the  chapel-top; 

That  length  of  convent-wall  across  the  way 

Holds  the  trees  safer,  huddled  more  inside; 

The  last  monk  leaves  the  garden ;  days  decrease, 

And  autumn  grows,  autumn  in  everything. 

Eh?  the  whole  seems  to  fall  into  a  shape 

As  if  I  saw  alike  my  work  and  self, 

And  all  that  I  was  born  to  be  and  do, 

A   twilight-piece  ..... 

You  don't  understand 
Nor  care  to  understand  about  my  art, 
But  you  can  hear  at  least  when  people  speak: 
And  that  cartoon,  the  second  from  the  door 
— It  is  the  thing,  Love !  so  such  thing  should  be — 
Behold  Madonna! — I  am  bold  to  say. 
I  can  do  with  my  pencil  what  I  know, 
What  I  see,  what  at  bottom  of  my  heart 
I  wish  for,  if  I  ever  wish  so  deep — 
Do  easily,  too — when  I  say,  perfectly, 
I  do  not  boast,  perhaps:  .  .  . 

•  ••••••• 

I  do  what  many  dream  of  all  their  lives, 

— Dream  ?  strive  to  do,  and  agonize  to  do, 

And  fail  in  doing.     I  could  count  twenty  such 

On  twice  your  fingers,  and  not  leave  this  town, 

Who  strive — you  don't  know  how  the  others  strive 

To  paint  a  little  thing  like  that  you  smeared 

Carelessly  passing  with  your  robes  afloat, — 

Yet  do  much  less,  so  much  less,  Someone  says, 

(I  know  his  name,  no  matter) — so  much  less! 

Well,  less  is  more,  Lucrezia:  I  am  judged. 

There  burns  a  truer  light  of  God  in  them, 

In  their  vexed  beating  stuffed  and  stopped-up  brain, 

Heart,  or  whate'er  else,  than  goes  on  to  prompt 

This  low-pulsed  forthright  craftsman's  hand  of  mine. 

Their  works  drop  groundward,  but  themselves,  I  know, 


BROWNING  331 

Reach  many  a  time  a  heaven  that's  shut  to  me, 
Enter  and  take  their  place  there  sure  enough, 
Though  they  come  back  and  cannot  tell  the  world. 
My  works  are  nearer  heaven,  but  I  sit  here. 
The  sudden  blood  of  these  men !  at  a  word — 
Praise  them,  it  boils,  or  blame  them,  it  boils  too. 
I,  painting  from  myself  and  to  myself, 
Know  what  I  do,  am  unmoved  by  men's  blame 
Or  their  praise  either.  .... 

•  •  •  •  ••  •  •  • 

Ah,  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 
Or  what's  a  heaven  for?    All  is  silver-gray 
Placid  and  perfect  with  my  art:  the  worse! 

And  you  will  notice  the  crowning  pathos  of  the  picture  is 
that  Andrea  sits  down  at  the  end,  acquiescent,  humbly  con- 
tent in  feeble  resignation.  The  spring  of  aspiration  is 
broken  in  him.  He  sees  that  other  men  are  doing  higher 
things,  but  he  gets  no  sight  of  that  unattainable  ideal  which 
allures  and  inspires.  A  vague  sense  of  failure,  a  gnawing 
envy,  but  no  noble  discontent, 

.  .   .  that    bids    nor    sit    nor    stand    but    go! 

I  am  grown  peaceful  as  old  age  to-night. 
I  regret  little,  I  would  change  still  less. 
Since  there  my  past  life  lies,  why  alter  it? 

No  doubt,  there's  something  strikes  a  balance. 

•  •••••■• 

.  .  .  What  would  one  have? 
In  heaven,  perhaps,  new  chances,  one  more  chance — 

So  fades  the  soul  that  had  the  painter's  cunning  hand  but 
not  the  artist's  yearning  heart. 

Similarly  in  his  own  art,  Browning  was  always  inclined 
to  rank  the  poet's  work,  not  by  the  perfection  of  its  form, 
but  by  the  power  of  its  spirit.  Shelley  was  the  one  whom, 
of  all  modern  poets,  he  unquestionably  admired  most.  It 
was  Shelley's  poetry  that  had  first  set  his  heart  on  fire,  in 
those  early  days  of  the  twenties  when  Shelley  was  exile  and 
outcast.  Browning  never  forgot  that  night, — a  soft  May 
night  it  was,  he  used  to  say,  and  two  nightingales  from  the 


332  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

boskage  of  a  garden  hard  by  were  striving  with  each  other 
in  song, — when  he  first  turned  over  the  leaves  of  that  price- 
less shabby  first  edition  of  Shelley,  Epipsychidiort,  Alastor, 
Adonais;  a-tremble  all  night  over  those  pages  in  which  the 
most  thrilling  of  poets  lays  bare  his  soul.  In  that  night 
Browning's  muse  took  possession  of  him.  In  his  very  first 
volume,  Pauline,  he  apostrophizes  Shelley  with  a  fine  rap- 
ture, and  to  the  end  of  his  days  Shelley  was  for  him  the 
most  fascinating  of  poets.  Yet  he  never  approved  any  of 
Shelley's  most  characteristic  opinions;  he  never  shared 
Shelley's  bitter  distrust  of  all  existing  institutions,  or  sym- 
pathized with  that  doctrinaire  revolutionary  temper  of 
which  Shelley  is  our  best  poetical  representative.  Nor  do  I 
think  he  was  enthralled,  as  so  many  have  been  and  ever 
will  be,  by  the  piercing  sweetness  of  Shelley's  verse,  where 
poetry  subtly  passes  into  purest  music.  It  was  rather  the 
power  of  concentrated  enthusiasm  in  Shelley  that  captivated 
Browning.  He  loved  Shelley  because  Shelley  more  than  any 
other  poet  seems  an  embodied  aspiration,  a  pure  flame  of  de- 
sire. Browning  could  forget  everything  else  for  that. 
Those  of  you  who  are  confirmed  Browning  lovers  and  have 
read  the  Parleyings  will  remember  his  parley  with  old  Chris- 
topher Smart  whom,  says  Sam  Johnson,  they  call  mad  be- 
cause he  wants  to  pray  with  everybody  and  has  a  dislike  for 
clean  linen.  But  this  poor  creature,  whose  only  poem — 
amid  acres  of  rubbish — was  scratched  with  a  key  on  the 
wall  of  his  madhouse  cell,  Browning  deliberately  ranks  with 
Milton  and  Keats  because,  though  his  art  was  bungling  and 
his  mind  crazed,  he  and  he  alone  between  Milton  and  Keats 

pierced  the  screen 
'Twixt  thing  and  word,  lit  language  straight  from  soul, — 

.  .  .  shapely  or  uncouth, 
Fire-suffused  through  and  through,  one  blaze  of  truth. 

It  would  be  hard  to  find  more  extreme  proof  that  in  Brown- 
ing's artistic  verdicts  the  form  counts  for  nothing  and  the 
spirit  for  everything. 

It  will  occur  to  many  readers  of  Browning  that  had  he 


BROWNING  333 

been  less  indifferent  to  artistic  workmanship,  it  might  have 
been  better  for  his  own  verse.  As  it  is,  he  always  seemed 
fearful  that  the  divine  afflatus  might  vanish  in  the  painful 
delays  of  composition.  This,  I  think,  is  one  reason  of 
his  haste,  his  disjointed  structure,  his  prosaic  diction.  He 
dared  not  stay  to  cull  and  order  his  phrase  for  fear  his 
thought  might  cool  before  he  could  get  it  into  shape. 

Browning's  strenuous  insistence  on  the  spirit  of  ideal 
aspiration  as  the  only  element  of  value  in  art  is,  at  all  events, 
a  most  healthy  antidote  to  the  modern  cant  about  art  for 
art's  sake.  They  tell  us  nowadays  sometimes  that  we  must 
divorce  our  ethics  and  our  aesthetics.  We  have  no  right,  so 
the  critics  say,  to  ask  or  even  to  think  about  the  moral  signifi- 
cance of  our  painting  or  our  poem;  is  it  beautiful,  is  it  well 
wrought? — these  are  the  only  relevant  questions.  Well,  it  is 
quite  possible  to  divorce  your  ethical  sense  from  your  aestheti- 
cal ;  that  is  true  enough.  Browning  knew  that.  You  may 
be  sure  he  hadn't  filled  himself  with  the  history  of  Italian 
art  without  making  the  acquaintance  of  many  a  man  of 
cunning  skill  and  nicest  taste  who  was  nevertheless  a  born 
child  of  the  devil,  and  all  his  lifetime  wrought  the  will  of 
his  father.  But  Browning  insists  that  such  a  man  is  never 
the  true  artist,  rather  the  fine  artisan,  craftsman,  or  most 
likely  only  the  connoisseur.  Among  Browning's  men  and 
women  there  are  several  most  remarkable  specimens  of  this 
type  of  character.  Take  the  Bishop  who  is  ordering  his 
tomb  at  St.  Praxed's,  for  instance.  The  dying  old  prelate 
hardly  seems  to  have  any  soul  left  worth  the  saving;  no 
reverence,  no  affection;  no  thought  of  righteousness  or  judg- 
ment to  come;  only  a  feverish  apprehension  that  he  may  be 
cheated  of  his  tomb  at  last,  and  a  gloating,  luxurious  sense 
of  that  rich  artistry  he  hopes  to  lay  his  clay  under: 

And  I  shall  fill  my  slab  of  basalt  there, 
And  'neath  my  tabernacle  take  my  rest, 
With  those  nine  columns  round  me,  two  and  two, 

•  ••■•••• 

Peach-blossom  marble  all,  the  rare,  the  ripe 
As  fresh-poured  red  wine  of  a  mighty  pulse. 


334  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Some  lump,  ah  God,  of  lapis  lazuli, 

Big  as  a  Jew's  head  cut  off  at  the  nape, 

Blue  as  a  vein  o'er  the  Madonna's  breast  .  .  . 

•  •••  •••• 

So,  let  the  blue  lump  poise  between  my  knees, 
Like  God  the  Father's  globe  on  both  his  hands 
Ye  worship  in  the  Jesu  Church  so  gay, 

•  ••••••• 

Swift  as  a  weaver's  shuttle  fleet  our  years: 
Man  goeth  to  the  grave,  and  where  is  he? 
Did  I  say  basalt  for  my  slab,  sons?     Black — 
'T  was  ever  antique-black  I  meant ! 

Perhaps  a  still  better  example  of  the  same  type  of  character 
is  that  Duke  of  Ferrara  who,  while  negotiating  with  an 
envoy  for  the  hand  of  a  new  Duchess,  dwells  with  the  con- 
noisseur's fine  relish  upon  the  excellent  picture  of  his  last 
one.  It  is  one  of  the  best  specimens  of  the  dramatic  mono- 
logue. With  wonderful  skill,  Browning,  in  these  few  lines, 
makes  this  Duke  reveal  his  whole  character, — his  polished 
and  faultless  courtesy,  his  exquisite  tastes,  and  his  cold,  hard 
heart: 

That's  my  last  Duchess  painted  on  the  wall, 
Looking  as  if  she  were  alive.     I  call 
That  piece  a  wonder,  now:  Fra  Pandolf's  hands 
Worked  busily  a  day,  and  there  she  stands. 
Will  't  please  you  sit  and  look  at  her?     I  said 
"Fra  Pandolf"  by  design,  for  never  read 
Strangers  like  you  that  pictured  countenance, 
The  depth  and  passion  of  its  earnest  glance, 
But  to  myself  they  turned  (since  none  puts  by 
The  curtain  I  have  drawn  for  you,  but  I ) 
And  seemed  as  they  would  ask  me,  if  they  durst, 
How  such  a  glance  came  there;  so,  not  the  first 
Are  you  to  turn  and  ask  thus.     Sir,  'twas  not 
Her  husband's  presence  only,  called  that  spot 
Of  joy  into  the  Duchess*  cheek:  perhaps 
Fra  Pandolf  chanced  to  say,  "Her  mantle  laps 
Over  my  lady's  wrist  too  much,"  or  "Paint 
Must  never  hope  to  reproduce  the  faint 
Half-flush  that  dies  along  her  throat:"  such  stuff 
Was  courtesy,  she  thought,  and  cause  enough 
For  calling  up  that  spot  of  joy.     She  had 
A  heart — how  shall  I  say? — too  soon  made  glad, 


BROWNING  335 

Too  easily  impressed :  she  liked  whate'er 

She  looked  on,  and  her  looks  went  everywhere. 

Sir,  'twas  all  one!     My  favor  at  her  breast, 

The  dropping  of  the  daylight  in  the  West, 

The  bough  of  cherries  some  officious  fool 

Broke  in  the  orchard  for  her,  the  white  mule 

She  rode  with  round  the  terrace — all  and  each 

Would  draw  from  her  alike  the  approving  speech, 

Or  blush,  at  least.     She  thanked  men, — good!  but  thanked 

Somehow — I  know  not  how — as  if  she  ranked 

My  gift  of  a  nine-hundred-years-old  name 

With  anybody's  gift.     Who'd  stoop  to  blame 

This  sort  of  trifling?     Even  had  you  skill 

In  speech — (which  I  have  not) — to  make  your  will 

Quite  clear  to  such  an  one,  and  say,  "Just  this 

Or  that  in  you  disgusts  me;  here  you  miss, 

Or  there  exceed  the  mark" — and  if  she  let 

Herself  be  lessoned  so,  nor  plainly  set 

Her  wits  to  yours,  forsooth,  and  made  excuse, 

— E'en  then  would  be  some  stooping;  and  I  choose 

Never  to  stoop.     Oh  sir,  she  smiled,  no  doubt, 

Whene'er  I  passed  her;  but  who  passed  without 

Much  the  same  smile?    This  grew;  I  gave  commands; 

Then  all  smiles  stopped  together.     There  she  stands 

As  if  alive.    Will  't  please  you  rise?     We'll  meet 

The  company  below,  then.    I  repeat, 

The  Count  your  master's  known  munificence 

Is  ample  warrant  that  no  just  pretence 

Of  mine  for  dowry  will  be  disallowed; 

Though  his  fair  daughter's  self,  as  I  avowed 

At  starting,  is  my  object.     Nay,  we'll  go 

Together  down,  sir.     Notice  Neptune,  though, 

Taming  a  sea-horse,  thought  a  rarity, 

Which  Claus  of  Innsbruck  cast  in  bronze  for  me! 

So  true  is  it  that  the  hardest  heart  may  take  the  finest  polish. 
There  is  surely  no  gospel  in  art  so  long  as  art  is  thought 
of  thus,  as  a  means  to  tickle  the  senses  or  to  embellish  the 
mere  outside  of  life.  But  if  art  be,  as  I  have  said  Browning 
always  conceives  it,  the  expression  of  individual  striving 
fter  spiritual  ideals,  then  it  as  surely  has  a  power  to  purity 
and  uplift.  It  stimulates  those  desires  that  arc  the  spring 
of  noble  living.  Nay,  in  its  highest  reaches  it  gives  us 
glimpses  into  the  infinite;  it  fascinates  us  with  larger  vision 


a 


336  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

and  diviner  beauty  than  of  earth,  until  the  yearning  of  the 
artist  passes  insensibly  into  religious  longing  and  hope.  Shall 
there  not  be  endless  room  for  aspiration?  The  desires  that 
earth  is  too  strait  for,  shall  they  not  find  otherwhere  their 
goal?  That  is  the  thought  of  the  noblest  of  Browning's 
poems  of  art,  the  Abt  Vogler.  Abt  Vogler  has  been  playing 
upon  his  orchestration,  rapt  into  an  ecstasy  of  lonely  wonder 
and  awe  at  the  structure  of  sound  he  has  reared.  It  is  only 
sound,  to  be  sure,  the  world  is  full  of  such,  loud  and  soft, 
high  and  low,  that  is  all:  but  as  its  harmonies  grew  and 
thickened,  what  meanings  it  seemed  to  reveal;  how  its  pas- 
sion climbed  to  heaven, 

And  the  emulous  heaven  yearned  down,  made  effort  to  reach  the 
earth, 
As  the  earth  had  done  her  best,  in  my  passion,  to  scale  the  sky: 

till,  for  a  time,  the  bonds  of  this  earthly  life  seemed  loosed, 
"there  was  no  more  near  nor  far," — and  the  entranced 
player  seemed  in  some  divine  companionship  whether  in  the 
body  or  out  of  the  body  he  knew  not — 

All  through  my  keys  that  gave  their  sounds  to  a  wish  of  my  soul, 
All  through  my  soul  that  praised  as  its  wish  flowed  visibly  forth, 
All  through  music  and  me ! 

Or  say,  rather, 

here  is  the  finger  of  God,  a  flash  of  the  will  that  can, 
Existent  behind  all  laws. 

But  as  his  musing  fingers  desert  the  keys,  it  fades  away,  as 
all  good  things  of  earth  do.  It  was  a  glimpse  only,  a  star, 
one  moment's  shine  of  heaven.  "Gone,  and  the  good  tears 
start."  For  why  must  our  bright  moments  be  fleeting,  un- 
certain, varied,  when  our  natures  cry  out,  God  knows,  for 
the  certain  and  enduring,  "for  the  same,  same  self,  same 
love,  same  God"? 

Therefore  to  whom  turn  I  but  to  thee,  the  ineffable  Name? 

Builder  and  maker,  thou,  of  houses  not  made  with  hands! 
What,  have  fear  of  change  from  thee  who  art  ever  the  same? 

Doubt  that  thy  power  can  fill  the  heart  that  thy. power  expands? 


BROWNING  337 

There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good!    What  was,  shall  live  as  before; 

The  evil  is  null,  is  nought,  is  silence  implying  sound ; 
What  was  good  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much  good  more; 

On  the  earth  the  broken  arcs;  in  the  heaven,  a  perfect  round. 

All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist; 

Not  its  semblance,  but  itself ;  no  beauty,  nor  good,  nor  power 
Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the  melodist 

When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour. 
The  high  that  proved  too  high,  the  heroic  for  earth  too  hard, 

The  passion  that  left  the  ground  to  lose  itself  in  the  sky, 
Are  music  sent  up  to  God  by  the  lover  and  the  bard; 

Enough  that  he  heard  it  once:  we  shall  hear  it  by  and  by. 

Thus  do  the  highest  imaginings  of  art  blend  into  that  pure 
flame  of  aspiration  that  burns  and  trembles  up  to  God. 


II 

In  1845  there  was  living — nay,  it  seemed  likely  slowly 
dying — in  a  darkened  room  of  her  father's  house  in  London, 
a  delicate,  fragile  woman.  "A  slight  figure,"  says  Miss 
Mitford,  who  knew  her  well  in  those  years,  "with  a  shower 
of  dark  curls  falling  on  each  side  of  a  most  expressive  face, 
large  tender  eyes  richly  fringed  by  dark  lashes,  and  a  smile 
like  a  sunbeam."  Fame  had  already  come  to  her,  but  love 
had  kept  aloof.  Her  father  was  a  well-meaning,  hard,  hide- 
bound man.  Her  mother  had  long  been  dead.  Her  only 
brother,  her  only  near  friend,  she  had  seen  drown  before 
her  eyes.  She  seemed  left  alone,  and  though  always  keenly 
alive  in  spirit,  yet  fading  slowly  out  of  the  world.  It  was 
at  the  door  of  this  house,  No.  50  Wimpole  Street,  that 
Robert  Browning,  introduced  by  his  friend  John  Kenyon, 
knocked  one  evening  early  in  that  year  1845  to  meet  for 
the  first  time  Elizabeth  Barrett.  Their  poetry  had  made 
them  known  to  each  other  before;  for  Miss  Barrett  had 
already  written  Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship,  and  the  Rhyme 
of  the  Duchess  May,  and  The  Cry  of  the  Children,  and  some 
half  a  score  more  of  lyrics  that  the  world  is  likely  to  remem- 
ber;   while    Robert    Browning   had    already   written   Pippa 


338  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Passes,  and  the  first  part  of  Saul,  and  Evelyn  Hope,  and 
all  the  rest  of  those  pomegranates, 

which,  if  cut  deep  down  the  middle, 
Show  a  heart  within  blood-tinctured,  of  a  veined  humanity. 

But  at  this  first  meeting  their  mutual  interest  and  admiration 
passed  instantly  into  love, — the  love  of  two  strongly  con- 
trasted, complementary  natures, — the  love  of  the  most  ro- 
bust and  virile  of  poets  for  the  most  delicate,  sensitive, 
spiritual. 

What  followed,  all  the  world — so  far  as  the  world  was 
ever  allowed  to  know  it — knows  very  well.  On  the  twelfth 
of  September  of  the  following  year  Robert  Browning  and 
Elizabeth  Barrett  stepped  into  Marylebone  Church  by  them- 
selves and  were  married, — so  quietly  that  even  their  best 
friends  did  not  hear  of  it  for  some  time  afterwards, — and  a 
few  days  later  they  started  for  Italy  and  life.  Before  that 
new  joy,  Death,  whose  summoning  finger  had  almost  been 
laid  upon  that  woman's  pulses,  drew  back  abashed.  Love 
brought  her  health,  and  knowledge,  and  song.  It  was  in 
Pisa  that  she  first  showed  her  husband  the  manuscript  of 
that  series  of  poems  in  which  the  solemn  and  sanctifying  joy 
that  had  dawned  upon  her  life  found  its  expression,  those 
Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  as  she  chose  to  call  them, 
which,  I  think,  in  their  intensity  of  emotion  and  in  a  certain 
melodious  largeness  of  utterance  may  challenge  comparison 
with  any  cycle  of  sonnets  since  Shakespeare's, — poems  such 
as  none  but  a  woman  could  have  written,  and  no  other 
woman  has  written: 

My  own  Beloved,  who  hast  lifted  me 
From  this  drear  flat  of  earth  where  I  was  thrown, 
And,  in  betwixt  the  languid  ringlets,  blown 
A  life-breath,  till  the  forehead  hopefully 
Shines  out  again,  as  all  the  angels  see, 
Before  thy  saving  kiss!     My  own,  my  own, 
Who  earnest  to  me  when  the  world  was  gone, 
And  I  who  looked  for  only  God,  found  thee! 
I  find  thee;  I  am  safe,  and  strong,  and  glad. 
As  one  who  stands  in  dewless  asphodel 


BROWNING  339 

Looks  backward  on  the  tedious  time  he  had 
In  the  upper  life, — so  I,  with  bosom-swell, 
Make  witness,  here,  between  the  good  and  bad, 
That  Love,  as  strong  as  Death,  retrieves  as  well. 

Yet  this  is  the  verse  of  no  clinging  weakling;  but  of  a  woman 
who  could  sing,  in  the  same  years,  and  in  strains  equally 
inspired,  the  sacred  joy  of  wedded  love  and  the  high  ardors 
of  a  militant  nature. 

The  dearest  poet  I  ever  knew, — 
Dearest,  and  greatest,   and  best  to  me, 

said  Robert  Browning,  twenty  years  after  she  was  gone 
from  his  side. 

But  nothing  either  husband  or  wife  could  ever  write  was 
half  so  perfect  a  poem  as  that  wedded  life  of  fifteen  years 
in  Italy.  What  house  is  enshrined  in  more  sacred  memories 
than  that  Casa  Guidi,  from  the  balcony  of  which  on  that 
still  summer  night,  wrhen  flame  fell  silently  from  cloud  to 
cloud,  Robert  Browning  leaned  musing  to  see  the  tragedy 
of  The  Ring  and  the  Book  act  itself  again  before  his  inner 
eye;  that  house  in  front  of  which  Elizabeth  Barrett  Brown- 
ing heard  the  little  child  go  singing  past,  "O  bella  Liberta, 
O  bella";  the  house  in  which,  so  many  an  evening,  the  hus- 
band watched  his  wife 

Reading  by  fire-light,  that  great  brow 

And  the  spirit-small  hand  propping  it, 
Mutely,  my  heart  knows  how — 

When,  if  I  think  but  deep  enough, 

You  are  wont  to  answer,  prompt  as  rhyme. 

That  was  the  ideal  marriage. 

Robert  Browning  was  no  man  to  turn  his  life  inside  out 
for  the  world  to  see,  and  he  addressed  only  one  poem  to  his 
wife  in  her  lifetime,  I  believe;  but  I  sometimes  think  that 
one,  the  epilogue  to  Men  and  Women,  is  the  most  perfect 
poem  of  husband  to  wife  in  our  language;  his  love  has  such 
manly  reticence,  such  solemn  sense  of  a  sacred  inner  life 
which  the  stranger  intcrmeddlcth  not  with,  and  which  may 
not  utter  itself  in  speech  : 


340  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

What  were  seen  ?     None  knows,  none  ever  shall  know. 

Only  this  is  sure — the  sight  were  other, 

Not  the  moon's  same  side,  born  late  in  Florence, 

Dying  now  impoverished  here  in  London. 

God  be  thanked,  the  meanest  of  his  creatures 

Boasts  two  soul-sides,  one  to  face  the  world  with, 

One  to  show  a  woman  when  he  loves  her! 

This  I  say  of  me,  but  think  of  you,  Love! 

This  to  you — yourself  my  moon  of  poets! 

Ah,  but  that's  the  world's  side,  there's  the  wonder, 

Thus  they  see  you,  praise  you,  think  they  know  you ! 

There,  in  turn  I  stand  with  them  and  praise  you — 

Out  of  my  own  self,  I  dare  to  phrase  it. 

But  the  best  is  when  I  glide  from  out  them, 

Cross  a  step  or  two  of  dubious  twilight, 

Come  out  on  the  other  side,  the  novel 

Silent  silver  lights  and  darks  undreamed  of, 

Where  I  hush  and  bless  myself  with  silence. 

Oh,  their  Rafael  of  the  dear  Madonnas, 
Oh,  their  Dante  of  the  dread  Inferno, 
Wrote  one  song — and  in  my  brain  I  sing  it, 
Drew  one  angel — borne,  see,  on  my  bosom! 

And  after  that  June  morning  of  1861  when  the  soul  of 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  took  sanctuary  within  the  blue, 
her  husband  never  gave  a  volume  to  the  world  but  that 
somewhere  in  its  pages,  often  in  phrases  so  veiled  that  only 
those  who  knew  him  could  read  it,  might  be  found  some 
utterance  of  his  unchanging  love,  some  assured  belief  that 
bridges  "the  distance  and  the  dark" : 

Hold  on,  hope  hard  in  the  subtle  thing 

That's  spirit;  though  cloistered  fast,  soar  free; 

Account  as  wood,  brick,  stone,  this  ring 

Of  the  rueful  neighbors,  and — forth  to  thee! 

Now  this  man,  thus  love-learned,  ought  surely  to  have 
written  us  good  love  poetry, — and  he  did;  the  deepest, 
truest,  most  passionate,  and  most  pure.  It  is  true,  indeed, 
that  Browning's  love  poetry  is  not  exactly  the  article  usually 
supplied  us  under  that  name.  Ordinary  love  verse,  like 
whatsoever  else  belongs  to  the  spring  time  of  life,  is  usually 


BROWNING  341 

a  pretty  enough  thing.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  depreciate  it — 
to  depreciate  it  would  be  to  forget  Burns  and  youth  and 
morning.  If  philosophy  ever  quite  takes  out  of  us  the  liking 
for  such  poetry  as  0,  my  luve  is  like  a  red,  red  rose,  why  the 
blood  of  the  race  will  be  getting  thin  and  the  hearts  of  us 
mostly  changing  into  gray  brain  matter.  But  we  shall  have 
to  admit  that  this  kind  of  verse  has  an  especial  charm  for 
the  unriper  seasons  of  life.  The  poetic  raptures  of  Brown 
to  Chloris,  with  which  we  all  feel  doubtless  some  thrill  of 
present  or  recollected  sympathy,  are  liable  to  seem  a  little 
out  of  date  when  Chloris  has  become  plain  Mrs.  Brown, 
undoubtedly  stouter  than  she  used  to  be,  and  with  a  son 
just  entering  college.  And  this  love  which,  as  Laertes  says, 
is  but  a  violet  in  the  youth  of  primy  nature,  though  it  makes 
the  world  go  round, — and  the  circulating  libraries, — is  yet 
hardly  the  stuff  out  of  which  the  greatest  literature  is  made. 
Now  in  Browning's  books  this  mere  youthful  passion, 
all  fire  and  dew,  is  very  seldom  found.  The  people  in 
Browning's  books  have  usually  attained  their  majority.  We 
shall  not  forget  that  when  Robert  Browning  first  met  Eliza- 
beth Barrett  he  was  thirty-three  years  of  age,  and  she  was 
thirty-nine.  Keats  in  one  of  his  later  sonnets  mourns  that 
he  may  no  more  have  "relish  in  the  faery  power  of  unre- 
flecting love."  That  is  what  Browning  never  had  much 
relish  of — "the  faery  power  of  unreflecting  love."  If  the 
love  in  his  poetry  hasn't  been  deepened  and  ripened  by  the 
mellowing  years,  you  will  usually  find  that  it  has  been  tested 
by  the  stress  of  some  supreme  trial,  or  in  some  way  grown 
into  the  life,  got  hold  upon  all  the  man's  powers.  Brown- 
ing's lovers  are  not  simply  nice  young  people  who  haven't 
anything  else  to  do.  Love  in  his  verse  is  not  the  mere 
sentiment,  rather  the  deep  controlling  passion,  urging  into 
action  intellect,  emotions,  will.  There  is  no  poetry  more 
intense;  but  its  passion  is  born  not  of  the  flesh  but  of  the 
spirit.  His  men  and  women  love  like  immortal  souls.  Even 
in  his  lightest,  most  graceful  verse  on  this  theme  there  is 
always  some  sense  of  the  depth  and  sanctity  of  love,  and 
its  supreme  value  in  life.     Take,  for  instance,  that  charming 


342  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

poem,  Love  Among  the  Ruins.  Here,  for  once,  there  is, 
to  be  sure,  no  action,  no  character,  no  thought;  only  a  pair 
of  lovers  alone  and  happy  in  the  wide,  gray,  folding  twilight. 
Yet  how  wonderfully  the  situation  intensifies  our  sympathy 
with  their  passion.  All  the  wide,  age-long  desolation  about 
them,  all  the  life  centuries  ago  swept  into  oblivion  to  make 
room  for  them,  only  throws  into  relief  the  power  and  beauty 
of  their  young  love.  It  is  one  of  Browning's  most  fascinat- 
ing pictures,  I  think,  and  its  low  tones  and  still  evening 
lights  are  all  a-tremble  with  emotion : 

Where  the  quiet-colored  end  of  evening  smiles 

Miles  and  miles 
On  the  solitary  pastures  where  our  sheep 

Half-asleep 
Tinkle  homeward  through  the  twilight,  stray  or  stop 

As  they  crop — 
Was  the  site  once  of  a  city  great  and  gay, 

(So  they  say) 
Of  our  country's  very  capital,  its  prince 

Ages  since 
Held  his  court  in,  gathered  councils,  wielding  far 

Peace  or  war. 

Now, — the  country  does  not  even  boast  a  tree, 

As  you  see, 
To  distinguish  slopes  of  verdure,  certain  rills 

From  the  hills 
Intersect  and  give  a  name  to,  (else  they  run 

Into  one,) 
Where  the  domed  and  daring  palace  shot  its  spires 

Up  like  fires 
O'er  the  hundred-gated  circuit  of  a  wall 

Bounding  all, 
Made  of  marble,  men  might  march  on  nor  be  pressed, 

Twelve  abreast. 

And  such  plenty  and  perfection,  see,  of  grass 

Never  was! 
Such  a  carpet  as,  this  summer-time,  o'erspreads 

And  embeds 
Every  vestige  of  the  city,  guessed  alone, 

Stock  or  stone — 
Where  a  multitude  of  men  breathed  joy  and  woe 

Long  ago; 


BROWNING  343 

Lust  of  glory  pricked  their  hearts  up,  dread  of  shame 

Struck  them  tame; 
And  that  glory  and  that  shame  alike,  the  gold 

Bought  and  sold. 

And  I  know,  while  thus  the  quiet-colored  eve 

Smiles  to  leave 
To  their  folding,  all  our  many-tinkling  fleece 

In  such  peace, 
And  the  slopes  and  rills  in  undistinguished  gray 

Melt  away — 
That  a  girl  with  eager  eyes  and  yellow  hair 

Waits  me  there 
In  the  turret  whence  the  charioteers  caught  soul 

For  the  goal, 
When  the  king  looked,  where  she  looks  now,  breathless,  dumb 

Till  I  come. 

•  •••••••• 

In  one  year  they  sent  a  million  fighters  forth 

South  and  North, 
And  they  built  their  gods  a  brazen  pillar  high 

As  the  sky, 
Yet  reserved  a  thousand  chariots  in  full  force — 

Gold,  of  course. 
Oh  heart!  oh  blood  that  freezes,  blood  that  burns  1 

Earth's  returns 
For  whole  centuries  of  folly,  noise  and  sin ! 

Shut  them  in, 
With  their  triumphs  and  their  glories  and  the  restl 

Love  is  best. 

But  poems  like  this  are  not  common  in  Browning's  work. 
More  characteristic  is  the  little  poem  that  may  be  called  a 
companion  picture  to  the  one  I  just  read,  Two  in  the  Cam- 
pagna.  Here  the  two  are  not  yoiihg;  they  are  rather  hus- 
band and  wife,  whose  love  is  not  a  thing  of  yesterday.  And 
the  theme  of  the  poem  is  not  their  love  merely,  but  rather 
one  of  the  subtle  longings  born  of  love,  the  longing  for 
spiritual  nearness  and  union  which  comes  when  there  flashes 
upon  us,  as  sometimes  for  a  moment  there  will,  that  lone- 
some, almost  terrifying  sense  of  the  infinite  distance  separat- 
ing every  human  soul  from  every  other  human  soul, — the 
absolute  isolation  of  our  personality.      It  seems  so  impos- 


344  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

sible  after  all  to  get  near  even  those  we  love  the  best,  into 
whose  eyes  we  look  as  if  indeed  we  saw  the  soul  there : 

I  would  I  could  adopt  your  will, 

See  with  your  eyes,  and  set  my  heart 
Beating  by  yours,  .... 

•  ••••••• 

No.    I  yearn  upward,  touch  you  close, 
Then  stand  away.     I  kiss  your  cheek, 

Catch  your  soul's  warmth, — I  pluck  the  rose 
And  love  it  more  than  tongue  can  speak — 

Then  the  good  minute  goes. 

The  waste  of  restless  verdure  about  them  in  the  Campagna, 
the  fitful  solitary  breeze,  the  abandon  of  nature,  all  seem 
filled  with  this  vague,  hopeless  desire, 

Infinite  passion,  and  the  pain 
Of  finite  hearts  that  yearn. 

There  are  many  of  Browning's  poems  that,  like  this,  sug- 
gest, often  in  an  elusive  but  thrilling  way,  some  spiritual 
desire  that  love  awakens,  vague  it  may  be  but  intense;  con- 
jecture of  truth  else  unthought  of,  wonder,  surmise. 

But  Browning's  best  love  verse  is  not  a  picture  of  any 
moods,  however  deep  or  tender,  or  of  any  passing  desire 
or  yearning;  rather  it  is  the  exhibition  of  love  as  the  moving 
power  of  life,  the  mightiest  of  forces  to  urge  man  to 
noble  ends.  Dick  Steele  once  wrote  to  his  Prue, — 
"Madam:  It  is  the  hardest  thing  in  the  World  to 
be  in  Love  and  yet  attend  businesse."  I  think  it 
seems  to  be  so, — in  books  at  all  events.  Your  hero 
of  the  average  novel  isn't  really  good  for  much  until  he 
is  married,  and  then  he  isn't  any  longer  a  hero.  But  in 
Browning's  men  and  women,  love  really  makes  life  more 
efficient,  and  what  is  better,  it  makes  life  broader  and  more 
generous.  Browning's  lovers  are  not  shut  up  in  any  sweet 
isolation.  Truth  to  say,  your  ordinary  lover — in  literature 
if  not  in  life — is  a  selfish  creature.  What  we  call  love 
is  usually  a  disguised  and  embellished  form  of  covetousness ; 
which  is  idolatry,  as  Scripture  saith.     It  is  bent  chiefly  on 


BROWNING  345 

acquisition.  The  lover  like  the  lawyer  is  intent  to  "win  his 
suit."  If  he  does  it,  he  is  insufferably  complacent;  if  he 
doesn't,  he  is  worse.  Sometimes  he  is  plaintive  and  senti- 
mental; sometimes  he  is  sulky  and  Byronic;  sometimes  he  is 
desperate  and  declamatory,  like  Tennyson's  bumptious  lover 
in  Locksley  Hall;  sometimes  he  plucks  up  a  forced  and  de- 
fiant cheerfulness, 

If  of  herself  she  will  not  love, 
Nothing  can  make  her: 
The  devil  take  her! 

But  in  any  case  it  is  evident  that  his  affection  has  been  pretty 
largely  alloyed  by  selfish  desire, — 

If  she  think  not  well  of  me, 
What  care  I  how  fair  she  be? 

Not  so  sing  Mr.  Browning's  lovers.  Their  love  is  an  un- 
selfish, spiritual  passion,  and  as  such  is  its  own  reward.  It 
means  entire  self-sacrifice,  not  so  much  to  a  person,  as  to 
an  ideal.  If  it  be  returned,  well;  if  not,  why  still  it  is  better 
to  have  had  the  soul  uplifted  and  its  vision  opened  by  a  gen- 
erous affection  than  to  have  lived  without  it.  Browning's 
rejected  suitors  never  mope  or  rail. 

In  that  charming  drama,  Colombe's  Birthday,  the  lover, 
Valence,  plain  advocate  of  Cleves,  has  for  a  little  space 
deemed  it  not  impossible  that  he  might  win  the  hand  of  the 
Duchess,  Colombe;  but  resigns  his  hope  of  it  to  his  rival 
because,  as  it  seems,  the  interest  of  the  lady  demands  such 
sacrifice.  He  is  speaking,  you  remember,  to  that  rival,  and 
the  Duchess  stands  by 

Had  I  seen  such  an  one, 

As  I  loved  her — weighing  thoroughly  that  word — 
So  should  my  task  be  to  evolve  her  love: 
If  for  myself! — if  for  another — well. 

Says  his  rival  : 

Heroic  truly!     And  your  sole  reward, — 
The  secret  pride  in  yielding  up  love's  right? 


346  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
And  Valence  replies : 

Who  thought  upon  reward?    And  yet  how  much 

Comes  after — oh,  what  amplest  recompense! 

Is  the  knowledge  of  her,  naught?  the  memory,  naught? 

— Lady,  should  such  an  one  have  looked  on  you, 

Ne'er  wrong  yourself  so  far  as  quote  the  world 

And  say,  love  can  go  unrequited  here! 

You  will  have  blessed  him  to  his  whole  life's  end — 

Low  passions  hindered,  baser  cares  kept  back, 

All  goodness  cherished  where  you  dwelt — and  dwell. 

What  would  he  have?    He  holds  you — you,  both  form 

And  mind,  in  his, — where  self-love  makes  such  room 

For  love  of  you,  he  would  not  serve  you  now 

The  vulgar  way, — repulse  your  enemies, 

Win  you  new  realms,  or  best,  to  save  the  old 

Die  blissfully — that's  past  so  long  ago! 

He  wishes  you  no  need,  thought,  care  of  him — 

Your  good,  by  any  means,  himself  unseen, 

Away,  forgotten ! — He  gives  that  life's  task  up. 

No  wonder  that  in  the  light  of  this  noble  devotion  the 
Duchess  can  read  her  own  heart;  and  as  Valence  turns  to 
retire  asking  only  a  withered  bunch  of  flowers  she  wore, 
she  falls  into  his  arms: 

I  take  him — give  up  Juliers  and  the  world. 
This  is  my  Birthday. 

If  I  were  a  woman,  I  should  pronounce  Browning's  lovers 
the  most  manly  specimens  of  their  class. 

It  is  evident  to  any  student  that  Browning's  ideal  life 
was  not  one  of  prudent  control  and  self-restraint,  but  rather 
one  of  strenuous  impassioned  aspiration  and  endeavor; 
and  that  he  sometimes  seems  a  little  over-indulgent  of  pas- 
sion and  impulse  because  he  knew  that  only  in  passion  and 
impulse  can  such  a  life  find  motive  power.  He  knew  that 
the  one  great  beneficent  power  that  must  be  behind  all 
noblest  effort  is  love — not  the  self-seeking  sentiment,  but  the 
self-renouncing,  aspiring  passion;  love  for  woman,  or  for 
man,  or  for  God.  Without  love  of  some  sort,  a  life  at 
once  strenuous  and  unselfish   is   impossible.     To  miss   it, 


BROWNING  347 

therefore,  "for  whatsoever  other  gain,"  is  to  lose  the  one 
supreme  motive  of  life. 

"It  once  might  have  been,  once  only,"  says  the  woman 
who  looks  back  to  the  early  years  when  both  she  and  the 
man  who  should  have  been  her  lover  slighted  love  for  art. 
The  years  have  brought  what  folks  call  success,  but 

Each   life  unfulfilled,   you   see; 

It  hangs  still,  patchy  and  scrappy: 
We  have  not  sighed  deep,  laughed  free, 

Starved,  feasted,  despaired, — been  happy. 

And  nobody  calls  you  a  dunce, 

And  people  suppose  me  clever: 
This  could  but  have  happened  once, 

And  we  missed  it,  lost  it  forever. 

Browning  is  not  here  encouraging  the  precipitancy  of  callow, 
juvenile  sentiment;  but  deliberately  to  smother  a  generous 
affection  at  the  bidding  of  selfish  prudence  or  convention, 
that  does  seem  to  him  the  most  irretrievable  error  of  life. 
And  to  a  man  of  his  temperament  it  was  inevitable  that 
such  an  error  should  seem  not  only  most  irretrievable  but 
most  dangerous.  One  of  his  most  significant  short  poems 
he  calls  Le  Byron  de  Nos  Jours,  and  the  Byron  of  our  days, 
Browning  would  say,  is  not  the  man  who  flings  the  reins 
upon  the  neck  of  his  appetites,  but  the  wary,  prudent  old 
French  academician,  "famed  for  verse  and  worse,"  who 
has  shut  his  heart  against  the  one  spontaneous  impulse  to  a 
generous  affection  that  ever  knocked  there,  and  so  has  turned 
over  to  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  not  only  himself 
and  the  woman  he  ought  to  have  loved,  but  two  souls  more, 
linked  with  theirs.  "This  you  call  wisdom?"  says  the 
woman  years  after, — 

The  devil  laughed  at  you  in  his  sleeve! 

You  knew  not?     That  I  well  believe; 
Or  you  had  saved  two  souls:  nay,  four. 

For  Stephanie  sprained  last  night  her  wrist, 
Ankle  or  something.     "Pooh,"  cry  you? 

At  any  rate  she  danced,  all  say, 
Vilely;  her  vogue  has  had   its  day. 

Here  comes  my  husband  from  his  whist. 


348  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

And  who  shall  deny  that  to  have  had  the  soul  emancipated 
and  inspired  by  the  pure  ardors  of  some  unselfish  devotion, 
even  though  at  cost  of  all  life's  ease  and  honors,  nay  even 
at  cost  of  life  itself,  is  better  than  to  prolong  that  life 
into  cheerless  years  unwarmed  and  unuplifted  by  any  gen- 
erous passion.  Such  I  am  sure  must  be  the  verdict  of  every 
one  who  loves  his  Browning. 

No  other  modern  English  poet  has  rendered  with  such 
intensity  the  spiritual  power  of  a  great  passion.  Take 
Caponsacchi  and  Pompilia  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 
The  Ring  and  the  Book  is  too  long,  the  critics  say;  and 
I  suppose  it  is, — longer  than  all  Homer,  I  believe.  The 
worst  of  which  is,  people  get  frightened  and  won't  read 
it.  But  there  is  fire  enough  in  Browning  to  glow  all 
through  it.  And  if  you  will  read  it,  read  it  from 
the  beginning;  see  the  tragedy  slowly  reveal  itself  side 
after  side:  listen  to  the  buzzing  rumor  of  Rome  about 
the  story  of  it;  slowly  disentangle  the  truth  from  that  close 
web  of  treachery  and  deceit;  watch  the  desperate  struggle 
of  Pompilia,  like  some  poor  dazed  and  prisoned  creature,  to 
escape  from  the  damnable  villainies  woven  about  her  by  her 
husband;  see  how  every  circumstance  seems  to  conspire  to 
make  escape  impossible,  and  the  very  effort  to  escape  seem 
a  crime;  then  see  how  a  kind  God  shows  to  each  other  this 
suffering  child-woman,  Pompilia,  and  her  rescuer,  the  noble 
soldier-priest,  Caponsacchi, — each  to  the  other  like  a  vision 
of  deliverance  sent  out  of  heaven,  deliverance  not  indeed 
from  the  pains  and  ills  of  life,  not  even  from  cruel  death, 
but  to  the  woman  strong  deliverance  out  of  shame  and  strife 
into  the  calm  when,  for  some  space  before  she  dies,  she  may 
learn  what  life  is  for  and  what  God's  love  is  like;  to  the 
priest,  sudden  deliverance  from  a  life  of  frivolities  and  hy- 
pocrisies into  a  higher  realm  where  he  can  recognize  the 
clear  voice  of  God,  see  through  all  conventions  and  mislead- 
ing appearances  what  is  his  real  duty  as  priest  of  the  Most 
High,  and  so  leap  to  do  it,  flinging  himself  upon  that  God 

Who  reigns  and  rules  out  of  this  low  world, — 


BROWNING  349 

read  all  this,  and  then  say  whether  Robert  Browning  did  not 
know  the  spiritual  power  and  uplift  of  love! 

Browning  has  written  nothing  more  profound  and  subtle 
than  his  picture  of  the  conflict  of  emotions  in  the  priest, 
Caponsacchi,  which  are  born  of  his  love  for  the  tortured, 
shamed,  murdered  wife  and  mother,  Pompilia.  Never  was 
love  more  tender  or  more  impassioned;  his  burning  defense 
of  her  before  the  judge  shows  that;  his  reverent  cherish- 
ing of  the  broken  words  that  fell  from  her  lips  in  that  night 
of  their  escape,  his  agony  at  the  thought  that,  after  all,  his 
efforts  were  unavailing  to  save  her  from  the  dagger  of  her 
husband : 

I  thought  I  had  saved  her  .  .  . 

It  seems  I  simply  sent  her  to  her  death. 

•  *•••••••• 

No,  Sirs,  I  cannot  have  the  lady  dead ! 

That  erect  form,  flashing  brow,  fulgurant  eye, 

That  voice  immortal  (oh,  that  voice  of  hers!) 

I  told  you, — at  one  little  roadside-place 

I  spent  a  good  half-hour,  paced  to  and  fro 

The  garden ;  just  to  leave  her  free  awhile, 

I  plucked  a  handful  of  Spring  herb  and  bloom: 

I  might  have  sat  beside  her  on  the  bench 

Where  the  children  were:  I  wish  the  thing  had  been, 

Indeed:  the  event  could  not  be  worse,  you  know: 

One  more  half-hour  of  her  saved!     She's  dead  now,  Sirs! 

This  is  love,  if  anything  ever  was — that  reverent  love  which 
is  the  beauty  at  the  heart  of  men's  adoration  of  the  Virgin; 
but  it  is  so  different  from  that  earthlier,  self-seeking  thing 
which  often  wears  the  name,  no  wonder  Caponsacchi  cries 

You  know  this  is  not  love,  Sirs, — it  is  faith, 
The  feeling  that  there's  God. 

For,  in  truth,  such  utter  self-denying  passion  as  Caponsacchi 
implies  some  faith  in  a  Divine  Power  that  has  made  us  cap- 
able of  it.  It  has  taught  Caponsacchi  that  love  is  the  source 
of  all  best  duty;  shown  him,  as  he  says,  that 


350  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Life  and  death 
Are  means  to  an  end,  that  passion  uses  both, 
Indisputably  mistress  of  the  man 
Whose  form  of  worship  is  self-sacrifice. 

And  Pompilia,  pale  wayside  flower  that  yet  all  tempests 
cannot  crush,  more  wonderful  still  is  the  exhibition  of  what 
love  hath  done  for  her.  I  hardly  remember  in  our  litera- 
ture such  another  picture  of  the  terrible  calm  power  of  simple 
innocence,  and  of  the  wisdom  that  lies  in  those  pure  instincts 
God  has  put  into  a  woman's  heart.  This  child  woman  has 
learned  to  suffer,  and  she  has  learned,  too,  when  suffering 
meant  shame,  no  longer  to  suffer  but  thenceforth  to  fight: 
and  then,  just  at  the  close  of  her  short,  starved  life,  by 
God's  good  grace,  love  has  come  to  her.  All  love — the 
love  that  sanctifies  the  pangs  and  joys  of  motherhood: 

Nobody  did  me  one  disservice  more, 

Spoke  coldly  or  looked  strangely,  broke  the  love 

I  lay  in  the  arms  of,  till  my  boy  was  born, 

Born  all  in  love,  with  nought  to  spoil  the  bliss 

A  whole  long  fortnight :  in  a  life  like  mine 

A  fortnight  filled  with  bliss  is  long  and  much. 

All  women  are  not  mothers  of  a  boy, 

Though  they  live  twice  the  length  of  my  whole  life, 

And,  as  they  fancy,  happily  all  the  same. 

There  I  lay,  then,  all  my  great  fortnight  long, 

As  if  it  would  continue,  broaden  out 

Happily  more  and  more,  and  lead  to  heaven: 

Christmas  before  me, — was  not  that  a  chance? 

I  never  realized  God's  birth  before — 

How  He  grew  likest  God  in  being  born. 

This  time  I  felt  like  Mary,  had  my  babe 

Lying  a  little  on  my  breast  like  hers. 

Beneath  that  benediction  she  can  have  a  dying  word  of  ex- 
cuse even  for  her  murderous  husband, — the  father  of  her 
babe: 

So  he  was  made;  he  nowise  made  himself: 
I  could  not  love  him,  but  his  mother  did. 

But  her  love  for  Caponsacchi,  her  angel  of  deliverance,  that 
is  strength  and  wisdom  and  trust  to  her,  God's  best  gift 
never  to  be  disavowed: 


BROWNING  3Si 

And  this  man,  men  call  sinner?    Jesus  Christ! 

Of  whom  men  said,  with  mouths  Thyself  mad'st  once, 

"He  hath  a  devil" — say  he  was  Thy  saint, 

My  Caponsacchi!     Shield  and  show — unshroud 

In  Thine  own  time  the  glory  of  the  soul 

If  aught  obscure, — if  ink-spot,  from  vile  pens 

Scribbling  a  charge  against  him — (I  was  glad 

Then,  for  the  first  time,  that  I  could  not  write)  — 

Flirted  his  way,  have  flecked  the  blaze! 

For  me, 
'Tis  otherwise:  let  men  take,  sift  my  thoughts 
— Thoughts  I  throw  like  the  flax  for  sun  to  bleach! 
I  did  pray,  do  pray,  in  the  prayer  shall  die, 
"Oh,  to  have  Caponsacchi  for  my  guide  1" 
Ever  the  face  upturned  to  mine,  the  hand 
Holding  my  hand  across  the  world, — a  sense 
That  reads,  as  only  such  can  read,  the  mark 
God  sets  on  woman,  signifying  so 
She  should — shall  peradventure — be  divine. 

And  if  Caponsacchi  calls  his  love  faith,  much  more  may 
Pompilia  give  that  name  to  hers.  This  sunburst  at  set 
of  her  stormy  day  is  but  a  gleam  of  that  larger  Divine 
Love  in  whom  we  may  trust  and  fear  no  evil.  Her  babe, 
her  soldier-priest,  Pompilia's  new  love  has  taught  her  how 
they  both  are  in  the  keeping  of  a  higher,  tenderer  care 
than  hers.     Her  dying  words  show  that: 

Weak  souls,  how  we  endeavor  to  be  strong! 

Shall  not  God  stoop  the  kindlier  to  his  work, 
His  marvel  of  creation,  foot  would  crush, 
Now  that  the  hand  he  trusted  to  receive 
And  hold  it,  lets  the  treasure  fall  perforce? 
The  better;  he  shall  have  in  orphanage 
His  own  way  all  the  clearlier:  if  my  babe 
Outlived  the  hour — and  he  has  lived  two  weeks — 
It  is  througli  God  who  knows  I  am  not  by. 
Who  is  it  makes  the  soft  gold  hair  turn  black, 
And  sets  the  tongue,  might  lie  so  long  at  rest, 
Trying  to  talk?     Let  us  leave  God  alone! 
Why  should   I   doubt  he  will  explain   in   time 
What   I   feel  now,  but  fail  to  find  the  words? 


rt 


352  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

No,  nowhere  in  English  poetry  since  Shakespeare  let  fall  the 
pen  with  which  he  had  written  the  last  of  his  tragedies, 
do  I  find  anything  that  can  so  purify  the  soul  by  pity  and 
terror;  nay,  not  even  in  Shakespeare  do  I  find  anything  that 
can  so  uplift  the  soul  with  the  assurance  of  a  kinship  be- 
tween our  human  love  and  that  which  is  divine,  as  can  this 
story  of  Pompilia  and  Caponsacchi. 

ill 

Thus  may  we  see  that  in  Browning's  thought,  art  and 
love,  like  all  other  forms  of  aspiration,  pass  up  into  religion. 
So  must  it  be  with  almost  all  great  poetry.  For  if  poetry 
is  a  picture  of  life  it  cannot  leave  out  that  department  of 
life  to  which,  more  than  to  any  other,  belong  wonder  and 
desire  and  hope.  Certainly  in  the  nineteenth  century  all 
English  poets  of  the  first  order — save  perhaps  Keats — 
concerned  themselves,  in  one  way  or  another,  with  man's 
religious  beliefs  and  longings. 

But  I  am  inclined  to  think  Robert  Browning  in  many  re- 
spects the  most  prominently  and  positively  Christian  poet 
of  the  last  generation.  And  this  not  principally  because 
he  was  an  avowed  believer  in  some  formulated  creed — 
though  he  was  gratifyingly  orthodox  in  that  direction,  a 
good  Presbyterian  deacon  of  the  Scotch  Free  Church  in 
Florence  and  passing  about  the  plate  for  the  alms  every 
Sunday — but  I  call  him  our  great  Christian  poet  rather  be- 
cause he  held  all  his  life,  in  spite  of  all  the  doubts  and  ques- 
tionings of  his  age — of  which  he  was  by  no  means  ignorant 
— a  healthy,  robust,  hopeful  faith  in  the  great  essentials  of 
Christianity.  He  is  uttering  his  own  credo  when  he  makes 
the  dying  John  say: 

the  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it, 
And  has  so  far  advanced  thee  to  be  wise. 

That  indicates  not  only  what  he  believes,  but  why  he  believes* 
it.     For  Browning's  faith  was  based  not  so  much  upon  ex- 


BROWNING  353 

ternal  or  historical  evidence  as  upon  a  profound  internal 
conviction  of  the  fitness  of  the  Christian  revelation  to  our 
deepest  needs. 

I  have  said  that  he  was  the  poet  not  of  man,  but  of  in- 
dividual men;  and  moreover  that  he  loved  all  forms  of  pro- 
nounced and  aggressive  personality,  in  which  the  human  life 
is  at  the  full.  This  yearning,  restless  soul  of  ours,  surely 
we  know  that  at  least,  each  for  himself,  and  none  but  a 
fool  will  ask  for  proof: 

Quoth  a  young  Sadducee 

"Reader  of  many  rolls, 
Is  it  so  certain  we: 

Have,  as  they  tell  us,  souls?" 

"Son,  there  is  no  reply!" 

The  Rabbi  bit  his  beard : 
"Certain  a  soul  have  / — 

We  may  have  none,"  he  sneered. 

And  what  mean  the  endless  longings  and  aspirations  of 
this  soul  when  it  most  truly  lives;  its  spurnings  of  every  step 
on  which  it  climbs  to  some  yet  higher  idea?  That  all  this 
means  nothing;  that  the  spark  which  disturbs  our  clod  flick- 
ers out  and  falls  into  our  mortal  dust;  that  the  ideal  which 
shines  beyond  our  highest  aspiring  is  only  an  illusion  that 
mocks  and  fades;  that  there  is  no  wider  scene,  no  higher 
justice:  this  is  intolerable.  Must  it  not  rather  be  that  we 
were  meant  to  hear  some  diviner  voice  saying, 

'Wherefore  did  I  create  for  thee  that  ear 
Hungry  for  music,  and  direct  thine  eye 
To  where  I  hold  a  seven-stringed  instrument, 
Unless  I  meant  thee  to  beseech  me  play?' 

The  argument  is  old;  but  few  men  can  feel  its  con- 
vincing power  as  a  man  of  Browning's  intensity  and  fullness 
of  life  must  feel  it.  He  has  drawn  it  out  repeatedly  in  his 
later  work,  as  in  Ferishtah's  Fancies  (whence  the  lines  just 
quoted  are  taken)  and  in  La  Saisiaz;  and  I  think  still  better 
in  those  earlier  poems  in  which  the  conclusion  is  dramatically 
implied  without  so  much  array  of  logical  process — in  that 


354  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

touching  and  truthful  poem,  Cleon,  for  instance.  Cleon,  the 
pagan  poet,  who  has  written  the  epos  on  a  hundred  plates 
of  gold,  and  the  little  chant  so  sure  to  rise  from  every 
fishing  bark  when  seamen  haul  the  net,  Cleon,  sculptor, 
painter,  philosopher,  writes  to  answer  the  question  of  King 
Protus  whether  he  have  r\ot  attained  the  proper  end  of  life, 
and  how,  therefore, 

now  life  closeth  up, 
I  face  death  with  success  in  my  right  hand. 

The  burden  of  his  yearning  answer  is  that  every  access 
of  knowledge  and  power,  every  advance  above  the  perfect 
animal  life  only  deepens  the  soul's  despair;  to  know  our  own 
infinite  powers  and  infinite  desires,  while  we  know  that  to- 
morrow we  are  not, — what  joy  is  that?  We  climb  the 
heights  of  knowledge  only  to  perish  the  lonelier  there. 

And  the  suggestion  of  Protus  that  the  poet  has  an  im- 
mortality in  his  works,  and  thus  really  lives  in  the  thoughts 
of  men  to  be, — that  fiction  of  an  immortality  of  influence 
that  our  modern  positivists  juggle  with,  the  hope  to  "join 
the  choir  invisible,  whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the 
world," — this  sorry  substitute  for  our  warm,  personal  life, 
Cleon  sadly  puts  aside  as  every  man  who  sees  straight 
and  speaks  truth  must: 

"But,"  sayest  thou — (and  I  marvel,  I  repeat, 
To  find  thee  trip  on  such  a  mere  word) — "what 
Thou  writest,  paintest,  stays;  that  does  not  die: 
Sappho  survives,  because  we  sing  her  songs, 
And  ^Eschylus,  because  we  read  his  plays!" 
Why,  if  they  live  still,  let  them  come  and  take 
Thy  slave  in  my  despite,  drink,  from  thy  cup, 
Speak  in  my  place.    Thou  diest  while  I  survive? 
Say  rather  that  my  fate  is  deadlier  still, 
In  this,  that  every  day  my  sense  of  joy 
Grows  more  acute,  my  soul  (intensified 
By  power  and  insight )  more  enlarged,  more  keen ; 
While  every  day  my  hairs  fall  more  and  more, 
My  hand  shakes,  and  the  heavy  years  increase — 
The  horror  quickening  still  from  year  to  year, 
The  consummation  coming  past  escape, 


BROWNING  355 

When  I  shall  know  most,  and  yet  least  enjoy — 

When  all  my  works  wherein  I  prove  my  worth, 

Being  present  still  to  mock  me  in  men's  mouths, 

Alive  still,  in  the  phrase  of  such  as  thou, 

I,  I  the  feeling,  thinking,  acting  man, 

The  man  who  loved  his  life  so  over-much, 

Sleep  in  my  urn.     It  is  so  horrible, 

I  dare  at  times  imagine  to  my  need 

borne  future  state  revealed  to  us  by  Zeus, 

Unlimited   in   capability 

For  joy,  as  this  is  in  desire  for  joy. 

Browning's  own  conclusion  is  clear.  He  does  not,  as 
some  of  his  critics  charge,  fall  into  the  error  of  claiming 
that  the  desire  for  immortality  is  itself  proof  enough  of 
immortality. 

Zeus  has  not  yet  revealed  it;  and  alas, 
He  must  have  done  so,  were  it  possible, 

sighs  the  pagan.  Nay,  God  has  revealed  it,  says  the  Chris- 
tian, and  the  heart  God  hath  made  leaps  to  accept  the  revela- 
tion God  hath  given. 

More  convincing  still  to  Browning's  thought  as  a  proof 
of  the  truth  and  divinity  of  the  Christian  revelation  is  its 
power  to  meet  the  demand  of  our  human  soul  for  love. 
Love  we  know  to  be  the  highest  thing  in  us.  Nay,  no  power 
however  mighty,  no  wisdom  however  infinite  can  be  so  high 
a  thing  as  love — 

the  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  god 
Amid  his  worlds,  I  will  dare  to  say. 

But  where  is  the  proof  of  that  larger,  diviner  love?  In 
the  world  about  us  with  its  imperfection,  its  evil,  its  violence? 
Or  even  in  the  wondrous  mechanism  of  the  Universe?  Nay; 
Power  there,  and  Wisdom,  but  not  Love,  or  at  best  love 
veiled  and  only  half  seen.  Optimist  as  Browning  was,  he 
knew  that  the  world  outside  us  cannot  reveal  a  loving  God. 
And  yet  is  it  credible  that  while  we  are  so  inferior  to  the 
Creator  in  power  and  wisdom,  we  should  be  his  superior 


356  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

in  love,  the  divinest  attribute  of  all?  Says  the  good 
old  Pope  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book: 

Is  there  strength  there? — enough:  intelligence? 

Ample:  but  goodness  in  a  like  degree? 

Not  to  the  human  eye  in  the  present  state, 

An  isoscele  deficient  in  the  base. 

What  lacks,  then,  of  perfection  fit  for  God 

But  just  the  instance  which  this  tale  supplies 

Of  love  without  a  limit? 

This  argument  is  implicated  in  almost  all  Browning's  poems 
on  religious  subjects,  but  nowhere  does  it  receive  such  in- 
spiring statement  as  in  that  glorious  poem,  Saul.  Some  of 
Browning's  later  writing  on  religious  themes  seems  to  me 
little  better  than  versified  syllogism,  swift,  subtle,  intellect- 
ual, but  with  too  little  distinctly  poetic  charm  or  inspiration. 
But  Saul  I  think  the  noblest  religious  poem  of  the  last  half 
century.  Its  long  bounding  lines  lift  us,  on  wave  after  wave 
of  hope  and  ardor,  up  to  that  closing  burst  of  genuinely 
prophetic  rapture  where  David  foresees  the  Christ  to  be. 
It  is  the  best  expression  I  know  in  modern  poetry  of  the 
rapt  vision  of  the  seer.  Ajid  this  high  assurance  is  born, 
as  I  said,  of  the  conviction  that  the  divine  love  cannot  be 
less  than  the  human,  and  that  it  must,  therefore,  some  day 
reveal  itself  more  clearly  to  man.  To  rouse  the  desponding 
Saul,  David  has  tried  the  charm  of  song,  the  pride  of 
achievement,  the  radiance  of  fame,  the  long  hope  of  praise 
from  generations  yet  to  be;  but  all  have  sufficed  only  to 
lift  the  great  king  a  little  out  of  his  mood,  and  fix  his  eye 
in  placid  regard  upon  the  singer.    At  last  Saul  slowly 

Lifted  up  the  hand  slack  at  his  side,  till  he  laid  it  with  care 

Soft  and  grave,  but  in  mild  settled  will,  on  my  brow:  through  my 

hair 
The  large  fingers  were  pushed,  and  he  bent  back  my  head,  with  kind 

power — 
All  my  face  back,  intent  to  peruse  it,  as  men  do  a  flower. 
Thus  held  he  me  there  with  his  great  eyes  that 

scrutinized  mine — 
And  oh,  all  my  heart  how  it  loved  him ! 


BROWNING  357 

And  out  of  that  great  love  slowly  dawns  upon  David  that 
great  truth  that  love  implies: 

"In  the  least  things  have  faith,  yet  distrust  in  the  greatest  of  all? 

Do  I  find  love  so  full  in  my  nature,  God's  ultimate  gift, 

That  I  doubt  his  own  love  can  compete  with  it?     Here,  the  parts 

shift? 
Here,  the  creature  surpass  the  Creator, — the  end,  what  Began? 
Would  I  fain  in  my  impotent  yearning  do  all  for  this  man, 
And  dare  doubt  he  alone  shall  not  help  him,  who  yet  alone  can? 
Would  it  ever  have  entered  my  mind,  the  bare  will,  much  less  power, 
To  bestow  on  this  Saul  what  I  sang  of,  the  marvellous  dower 
Of  the  life  he  was  gifted  and  filled  with?  to  make  such  a  soul, 
Such  a  body,  and  then  such  an  earth  for  insphering  the  whole? 
And  doth  it  not  enter  my  mind  (as  my  warm  tears  attest) 
These  goods  things  being  given,  to  go  on,  and  give  one  more,  the 

best? 

"I  believe  it!  'Tis  thou,  God,  that  givest.'tis  I  who  receive: 
In   the  first  is  the  last,   in  thy  will  is  my  power  to  believe. 
All's  one  gift:  thou  canst  grant  it  moreover,  as  prompt  to  my  prayer 
As  I  breathe  out  this  breath,  as  I  open  these  arms  to  the  air. 

■  •••••••••* 

Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love?    So  wouldst  thou — so  wilt  thou ! 
So  shall  crown  thee  the  topmost,  ineffablest,  uttermost  crown — 

As  thy  Love  is  discovered  almighty,  almighty  be  proved 

Thy  power,  that  exists  with  and  for  it,  of  being  Beloved ! 

He  who  did  most,  shall  bear  most;   the  strongest  shall  stand  the 

most  weak. 
'Tis  the  weakness  in  strength,  that  I  cry  for!  my  flesh,  that  I  seek 
In  the  Godhead!     I  seek  and  I  find  it.     O  Saul,  it  shall  be 
A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee;  a  Man  like  to  me, 
Thou  shalt  love  and  be  loved  by,  forever:  a  Hand  like  this  hand 
Shall  throw  open   the  gates  of  new  life  to  theel     See  the  Christ 

stand!" 

With  this  firm  grasp  on  a  few  great  spiritual  truths, 
Browning  went  through  life  like  a  crusader.  His  faith  was 
robust  and  militant.  He  didn't  tie  himself  up  by  the  de- 
tails of  any  creed,  very  likely;  but  he  had  the  heroic  en- 
thusiasm of  a  great  conviction.  He  is  the  most  valiant  of 
poets  in  the  face  of  life.  Nothing  could  beat  down  his  in- 
vincible optimism.     Through  all  the  down-heartcdness,  the 


358  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

low  tone,  the  temper  of  question  and  doubt  that  mark  the 
most  serious  English  poetry  of  the  last  half  of  that  century, 
his  assurance  rings  out  bold  and  inspiring.  He  was  not 
ignorant  of  all  the  insistent  questioning  of  his  time  upon  the 
deepest  themes.  Nor  did  he  turn  away  from  it.  Indeed, 
especially  in  his  later  life  he  liked  to  have  a  grapple  with 
some  unthrown  question  of  the  ages.  There  was  a  certain 
defiant  quality  in  him  always;  he  had  the  fighter's  instinctive 
desire  to  try  his  mettle.  In  the  face  of  whatsoever  doubt 
he  threw  the  challenge  of  a  fearless  faith.  Like  the  hero  in 
that  wonderfully  vivid  and  suggestive  poem,  Childe  Roland, 
he  could  say: 

I  saw  them  and  I  knew  them  all.    And  yet 
Dauntless  the  slug-horn  to  my  lips  I  set, 
And  blew. 

I  count  it  not  the  least  of  Robert  Browning's  service's 
to  humanity  that  he  did  so  much  to  reinforce  the  spiritual 
confidence  of  his  age,  to  hearten  us  with  the  high  assurance 
that 

God's  in  his  heaven — 
All's  right  with  the  world ! 

It  was  a  part  of  his  faith  that  whatsoever  is  dark  and 
whatsoever  hard  in  this  world  is  only  a  necessary  element  of 
that  discipline  for  which  we  are  put  here. 

This  life  is  training  and  a  passage — pass, 

says  the  old  Pope  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  Aspiration, 
progress,  this  is  the  condition  of  healthy  life.  But  were  the 
present  always  fair,  the  prize  always  within  our  grasp, 
how  should  we  aspire?  We  must  have  some  unrest  to  push 
us  on  to  better  things, — 

This  foot  once  planted  on  the  goal, 
This  glory-garland  round  my  soul, 
Could  I  descry  such  ?    Try  and  test ! 

•  •••»••• 

Earth  being  so  good,  would  heaven  seem  best? 


BROWNING  359 

Nay,  we  need  not  only  beauty  and  love  to  beckon,  but  pain 
and  fear  to  urge.  And  wisdom,  too,  how  should  we  grow  in 
that  unless  goaded  by  a  painful  sense  of  our  own  ignorance? 
The  full  day  is  ever  beyond  us;  but  yet  a  spark  disturbs 
our  clod.  There  must  be  more  truth  above  us;  doubt  is 
only  the  rough  road  by  which  we  climb  unto  it.  "Sorrow  is 
hard  to  bear,  and  doubt  is  slow  to  clear";  but  sorrow  and 
doubt  are  only  meant  to  sting  us  into  that  noble  discontent 
that  struggles  and  aspires.  The  sorrow  greatly  endured, 
the  doubt  valiantly  overcome, — so  we  gain  "those  wrestling 
thews  that  throw  the  world." 

Rather  I  prize  the  doubt 
Low  kinds  exist  without, 
Finished  and  finite  clods,  untroubled  by  a  spark. 

•  ••••**•** 

Then,  welcome  each  rebuff 

That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  but  go! 

Be  our  joys  three-parts  pain! 

Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain  ; 
Leam,   nor  account   the  pang;  dare,   never  grudge  the  throe! 

Only  underneath  such  a  heroic  confidence  as  this  there 
must  be  an  unswerving  faith  in  the  permanence  of  our  human 
personality,  and  in  the  existence  of  a  loving  God  above  us 
all.  I  must  be  assured  that,  whatever  my  failings  and  falls, 
my  career  is  not  to  end  in  failure  to-morrow;  but  that 
there  is  somewhere  endless  room  for  endless  effort.  And  I 
must  be  assured  that  all  this  restless  scheme  of  things  is  not 
the  sport  of  chance,  but  rather  under  the  direction  of  a  Being 
who  surpasses  us  in  love  as  far  as  is  wisdom.  These  two 
great  essential  truths,  as  revealed  in  Christianity,  Browning 
held  with  unfaltering  grasp  all  his  days.  The  lines  of  at- 
tack and  defense  might  change;  the  scientists  might  butt  at 
Genesis  as  they  did  in  the  fifties  and  sixties;  the  German 
critics  might  hammer  away  at  their  historical  criticism;  he 
wasn't  greatly  concerned.  Like  his  good  Pope,  he  didn't 
much  perplex  him  with  "aught  hard,  dubious,  in  the  trans- 
mitting of  the  tale." 


36o  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

"God  and  his  own  soul  stood  sure."  At  the  close  of 
that  striking,  if  somewhat  difficult,  poem,  La  Saisiaz,  speak- 
ing for  once  in  his  own  person,  in  his  fancy  he  longs  for 
fame — fame  in  which  might  unite  the  powers  of  all  those 
great  men  who  once  lived  near  the  lake  where  he  is  writ- 
ing,— the  wit  of  Voltaire,  the  learning  of  Gibbon,  the  elo- 
quence of  Rousseau,  Byron's  "rainbow,  tears" — and  all  for 
what?  Why  that  men  yet  to  be  might  say  of  him,  "He 
there,  .  .  .  crowned  by  verse  and  prose,  ...  he  at  least 
believed  in  soul,  was  very  sure  of  God !" 

For  himself,  he  had  always  the  buoyancy,  the  ardor  that 
comes  of  limitless  hope  and  desire.  There's  no  undertone  of 
sadness  in  him.  No  dim  horizon  shut  down  in  front  of  him. 
More  than  any  other  English  poet,  he  exemplifies  the  mean- 
ing of  that  wonderful  phrase  of  Scripture,  "the  power  of  an 
endless  life."  Mr.  Sharp  tells  us  how  in  his  later  years 
he  said  to  him:  "Death!  It  is  this  harping  on  Death  I  de- 
spise so  much,  this  idle  and  often  cowardly  as  well  as  ignor- 
ant harping.  .  .  .  What  fools  who  talk  thus.  Why, 
amico  mio,  you  know  as  well  as  I  that  death  is  life.  .  .  . 
Pshaw!  It  is  foolish  to  argue  upon  such  a  thing  even. 
.  .  .  Never  say  of  me  that  I  am  dead !" 

He  has  his  wish.  We  who  learned  to  know  the  living 
Browning  find  it  impossible  ever  to  think  him  dead.  And 
at  the  core  of  his  fame  will  ever  lie,  I  believe,  this  irrepres- 
sible power  of  personal  life.  In  the  next  century  men  may 
not  speak  of  him  as  the  greatest  English  poet  of  his  genera- 
tion— it  is  too  soon  for  us  to  be  sure  about  that;  they  surely 
will  not  speak  of  him  as  the  greatest  artist  in  verse — that 
fame  is  Tennyson's;  many  of  his  works  they  will,  I  think, 
forget  to  read.  But  they  will  remember  him  as  a  genius 
of  mass  and  power;  as  one  of  the  subtlest  explorers  of  the 
human  heart,  endowed  with  sinewy  intellect,  large  imagina- 
tion, capacity  for  enjoyment  and  appreciation  of  all  forms  of 
life,  and  with  a  gift  of  utterance  that,  if  not  often  flowing 
nor  always  clear,  had  immense  breadth,  pungency,  vigor. 
But  they  will  think  of  him  most  of  all,  I  believe,  as  the 
one  poet  who  expressed  the  robust,  unconquerable  vigor  of 


BROWNING  361 

faith  and  hope  that  underlay  all  the  shifting  doubt  of  his 
restless  age,  the  spiritual  hero  and  victor  in  the  poetry  of  the 
mid-nineteenth  century. 

One  poem,  I  think,  will  always  link  itself  with  special 
significance  to  his  memory, — I  mean  his  very  last  poem, 
which  we  did  not  read  until  after  he  was  gone, — surely  one 
of  the  most  striking  last  poems  ever  poet  wrote.  The  breath 
of  larger  life  is  in  it.  It  is  as  if  the  whole  poet  had  summed 
himself  up  in  those  noble  words  of  hail  and  farewell: 

At  the  midnight  in  the  silence  of  the  sleep-time, 

When  you  set  your  fancies  free, 
Will  they  pass  to  where — by  death,  fools  think,  imprisoned — 
Low  he  lies  who  once  so  loved  you,  whom  you  loved  so, 
— Pity  me? 

Oh  to  love  so,  be  so  loved,  yet  so  mistaken ! 

What  had  I  on  earth  to  do 
With  the  slothful,  with  the  mawkish,  the  unmanly? 
Like  the  aimless,  helpless,  hopeless,  did  I  drivel 
— Being — who  ? 

One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast  forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong  would  triumph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake. 

No,  at  noonday  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time 

Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer! 
Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 
"Strive  and  thrive!"  cry  "Speed, — fight  on,  fare  ever 
There  as  here!" 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH 

AMONG  the  most  potent  and  beneficent  influences  in 
England  during  the  decade  from  1830  to  1840  were 
the  teaching  and  example  of  Thomas  Arnold,  head- 
master of  Rugby  School.  The  distinctively  intellectual  quali- 
fications of  Arnold  for  his  work, — his  scholarship,  his  ex- 
ecutive capacity,  his  stimulating  methods  of  instruction,  his 
vivid  historical  imagination, — -all  these  he  himself  con- 
sidered subservient  to  the  highest  purpose  of  education :  the 
formation  of  intelligent,  independent  moral  character.  His 
famous  statement  to  his  boys  became  the  watchword  of 
Rugby:  "It  is  not  necessary  that  this  should  be  a  school 
of  three  hundred,  or  even  one  hundred,  or  even  of  fifty  boys ; 
but  it  is  necessary  that  it  should  be  a  school  of  Christian 
gentlemen."  And  such  he  made  it.  It  was  not  so  much 
that  he  taught  religion;  rather  that  all  his  teaching  was 
religious.  He  was  not  prone  to  religious  introspection. 
His  whole  cast  of  mind  was  not  philosophical  or  speculative, 
but  outward  and  practical.  Impatient  of  our  factitious  dis- 
tinctions between  sacred  and  secular  things,  he  thought  and 
spoke  of  religion  as  duty  and  service  rather  than  as  belief, 
and  as  binding  equally  upon  all  the  acts  of  life.  It  was  in- 
evitable that  pupils  who  passed  years  under  the  training  of 
such  a  teacher  should  imbibe  much  of  his  temper.  "What 
I  want  to  find  in  a  boy,"  Arnold  used  to  say,  "is  moral 
thoughtfulness."  It  soon  came  to  be  noticed  that  the  boys 
of  his  sixth  form  had  unusual  maturity  and  strength  of  prac- 
tical judgment,  and  an  unusual  sense  of  the  moral  quality 
of  action.  They  had  not  been  encouraged  to  think  over- 
much on  the  grounds  of  religious  belief,  or  to  be  constantly 
interrogating  their  own  inner  experiences;  on  the  contrary, 
they  were   interested  beyond   the  wont  of  boys   of  their 

362 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH      363 

years  in  the  affairs  of  the  world  outside — political,  histori- 
cal— and  they  had  become  accustomed  to  measure  all  these 
affairs  by  ethical  and  religious  standards.  Accepting  im- 
plicitly the  great  principles  of  Christian  teaching,  they 
applied  those  principles  in  healthy,  outward  fashion  to  con- 
duct. 

In  1837  there  were  two  boys  in  Rugby  who  were  to 
become  poets,  and  whose  poetry  was  to  have  a  unique  value 
as  the  best  expression  of  an  attitude  of  religious  doubt  and 
question  characteristic  of  many  thoughtful  men  about  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  One  of  these  boys  was 
Dr.  Arnold's  son,  Matthew,  the  other,  three  years  his  senior, 
was  Arthur  Hugh  Clough.  No  pupil  ever  felt  more  deeply 
the  influence  of  Arnold  than  did  this  young  Arthur  Clough. 
Not  that  there  was  anything  priggish  or  morbid  about  him. 
He  was  not  only  the  best  scholar  in  his  form,  but  the  best 
goal-keeper  in  the  football  field  and  the  best  swimmer  in 
the  river;  a  buoyant,  ambitious,  healthy  fellow.  But  there 
are  passages  in  his  early  letters  that  show  how  thoroughly 
he  had  accepted  Arnold's  ideals,  and  how  entirely  he  was 
governed  by  unselfish  moral  impulse.  "I  verily  believe," 
he  writes  a  friend,  "my  whole  being  is  soaked  through  with 
the  wishing  and  hoping  and  striving  to  do  the  school  good." 
He  is  looking  forward  to  entering  one  of  the  universities 
next  year,  and  decides  for  Oxford  partly  because  there  is, 
he  learns,  a  "high  Arnold  set  that  is  just  germinating 
at  Balliol  under  the  auspices  of  Stanley  and  Lake"  (who 
had  gone  up  the  year  before),  but  chiefly  because  he 
thinks  he  may  do  more  good  there.  And  the  possibilities 
of  Oxford  for  good  or  evil  he  thinks  far  greater  than  those 
of  Cambridge.  "Suppose,"  he  exclaims,  "suppose  Oxford 
became  truly  good  and  truly  wise  1"  With  such  ingenuous  as- 
pirations, Clough,  in  1 837,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  went  up  to 
the  university.  But  he  had  not  been  in  Oxford  a  month 
before  he  found  that  the  center  of  influence  there  was  Oriel 
rather  than  Balliol.  The  religious  tone  of  the  university 
was  decided,  not  by  the  Rugby  set,  but  by  that  young  fellow 
of  Oriel  who  was  preaching  every  Sunday  afternoon  in  St. 


364  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Mary's  Church.  More  than  forty  years  after,  Clough's 
friend,  Matthew  Arnold,  told  us  of  the  charm  that  voice 
had  for  him : 

Who  could  resist  the  charm  of  that  spiritual  apparition,  gliding 
in  the  dim  afternoon  light  through  the  aisles  of  St.  Mary's,  rising 
into  the  pulpit,  and  then,  in  the  most  entrancing  of  voices,  breaking 
the  silence  with  words  and  thoughts  which  were  a  religious  music, — 
subtle,  sweet,  mournful? 

It  was  clear  that  the  spiritual  forces  of  the  place  were 
swayed  by  this  man,  John  Henry  Newman,  and  the  group 
of  his  immediate  friends  and  disciples.     No  young  man  of 
thoughtful  and  reverent  temper  could  escape  their  influence. 
As  for  Clough,  he  says  that  for  two  years  he  was  like  a 
straw  drawn  up  a  chimney.     But — and  here  was  the  fatal 
danger — he  could  not  help  seeing  that  the  teaching  of  these 
men  was,  in  most  respects,  diametrically  opposed  to  what 
he  had  learned  at  Rugby.    They  counseled  obedience,  and 
discouraged  private  opinion.    They  urged  the  authority  of 
a  church,  and  disparaged  the  sufficiency  of  Scripture.    The 
whole  force  of  their  movement  was  directed  to  check  those 
liberal  tendencies  in  religion  and  politics  of  which  Arnold 
was  a  representative.     They  thoroughly  disliked  Arnold; 
and   Arnold,    though    some    of   them   were    his    intimate 
friends, — Keble  was  godfather  of  his  son  Matthew, — yet 
felt  with  pain  that  it  was  impossible  to  maintain  intimate 
relations  with  them.    Clough  tried  for  a  while  to  keep  out 
of  what  he  calls  "this  vortex  of  philosophism  and  discus- 
sion";  but  for  so  eager  and  inquisitive  a  mind  as  his  that 
was  impossible.     Like  many  young  men  at  that  time,  he 
came  to  question  the  validity  of  his  religious  beliefs  while 
yet  he  could  not  assent  to  any  churchly  authority  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  them.    He  had  no  sympathy  with  the  attitude  of 
confident  denial, — it  is  probable  that  he  never  positively 
repudiated  any  article  of  his  early  faith, — but  in  the  strain 
of  conflicting  opinions  and  tendencies  he  found  all  ground 
of  religious  certitude  slipping  away  beneath  him.    His  story 
thereafter  is  the  record  of  a  man  who  retains  in  a  very  high 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH  365 

degree  the  Christian  temper,  but  can  never,  in  a  life-long 
struggle,  quite  recover  the  Christian  creed.  And  his  poetry, 
many  readers  will  always  hold,  is  the  truest  and  most  moving 
record  in  our  language  of  such  a  struggle, — the  struggle  of  a 
noble  soul  who,  in  spite  of  all  his  doubts  and  questions,  never 
lost  courage  and  hope,  because  really  sustained  by  an  under- 
lying faith  in  a  divine  love  and  purpose  at  the  heart  of  all 
this  unintelligible  world. 

Clough  was  in  Oxford  eleven  years.  His  attainments 
in  scholarship  were  not,  at  first,  quite  what  his  remarkable 
record  at  Rugby  had  led  his  friends  to  expect.  The  tumult 
of  opinion  in  which  he  found  himself  involved  withdrew  his 
attention  too  much  from  his  studies  and  he  missed  one  or 
two  academic  distinctions  he  had  coveted.  But  in  1842  he 
was  elected  Fellow  of  Oriel  College,  and  next  year  tutor. 
One  thing  is  certain  from  the  scanty  records  of  those 
years, — young  Clough  was  one  of  the  most  lovable  of  men. 
He  was  not  likely,  indeed,  to  attract  a  large  circle  of  friends, 
partly  on  account  of  a  certain  shyness  and  reticence,  espe- 
cially upon  all  matters  affecting  his  own  experience,  and 
partly  from  the  utter  frankness  and  honesty  of  a  nature  im- 
patient of  the  conventionalities  and  half  meanings  of  casual 
acquaintance;  but  those  who  did  know  him  loved  him.  As 
one  of  his  Oxford  friends  said,  "He  had  a  gift  for  making 
people  personally  fond  of  him;  I  can  use  no  other  word." 
He  was  a  big,  broad-shouldered,  soft-hearted,  utterly  un- 
selfish fellow.  In  one  of  his  vacation  tramps  through  the 
Scottish  Highlands  he  chanced  upon  a  heather-thatched  hut 
wherein  was  a  child  lying  sick  of  a  fever,  the  father  away, 
the  mother  without  medicines  or  aid  for  her  child,  and 
nothing  to  be  had  nearer  than  Fort  William,  two  days' 
journey  away.  Clough,  without  a  moment's  hesitation, 
tramped  thither,  got  medicines  and  supplies,  and  returned 
in  time  to  save  the  child, — four  days'  hard  walk  over  a 
rough  country  for  a  child  he  had  never  seen,  and  whose 
parents  did  not  even  learn  his  name.  And  it  was  only  by 
accident  that  any  one  ever  heard  of  it.  That  was  just  like 
him. 


366  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Of  his  religious  perplexities  during  his  Oxford  life 
Clough  would  seem  to  have  said  but  little  to  his  friends. 
They  are  recorded  in  the  verses  written  in  those  years. 
In  all  his  writing  of  that  period  there  is  no  love  of 
controversy,  not  a  trace  of  the  pride  of  opinion,  or 
a  touch  of  sarcasm  for  any  honest  belief  which  he  can- 
not himself  accept.  This  verse  is  rather  a  record 
of  a  search  for  truth,  eager  but  reverent;  often  baffled 
but  never  impatient  or  disheartened.  He  has  no  liking 
for  merely  negative  and  destructive  criticism.  His  atti- 
tude toward  the  beliefs  he  cannot  accept  is  always 
that  of  question,  not  of  denial;  and  he  was  ready  to 
admit  that  others  might  have  found  truth  where  he  could 
not  discover  it.  In  a  letter  written  in  1847,  speaking  of 
some  theories  of  the  Atonement  which  he  cannot  under- 
stand, he  adds:  "I  think  others  are  more  right  who  say 
boldly,  'We  don't  understand  it,  and  therefore  we  won't 
fall  down  and  worship  it.'  Though  there  is  no  occasion  for 
adding  'There  is  nothing  in  it.'  I  should  say,  until  I  know, 
I  will  wait,  and  if  I  am  not  born  with  the  power  to  discover, 
I  will  do  what  I  can  with  what  knowledge  I  have — trust  to 
God's  justice,  and  neither  pretend  to  know,  nor,  without 
knowing,  pretend  to  embrace ;  nor  yet  oppose  those  who  by 
whatever  means  are  increasing  or  trying  to  increase  knowl- 
edge." In  point  of  fact,  his  divergence  from  recognized 
standards  of  orthodoxy  might  not  have  given  any  compunc- 
tion to  a  man  of  less  sensitive  conscience  in  his  position;  but 
Clough  was  the  soul  of  honesty,  and  after  1845  he  came  to 
feel  with  increasing  uneasiness  that  only  with  large  latitude 
of  interpretation  could  he  make  the  subscription  required 
of  a  fellow  and  tutor.  Accordingly,  in  1848,  he  resigned 
both  positions  and  with  very  little  notion  of  what  next, 
threw  himself  upon  the  world. 

In  the  same  year  he  published  his  first  long  poem. 
Those  people  who  expected  to  read  in  it  a  record  of 
his  spiritual  history  must  have  been  much  disappointed, 
for  it  contains  nothing  of  the  sort.  The  Bothie  of 
Tober-na-Fuolich,   as   he   called   it,    is    well   described    in 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH      367 

its  secondary  title  as  a  Long- Vacation  Pastoral;  it  is  the 
story  of  a  reading  party  with  their  tutor  in  the  Scottish 
Highlands.  The  Bothie  seems  to  lie  a  little  at  one  side  of 
the  main  current  of  Clough's  poetry;  I  do  not  think  it  his 
most  characteristic  work.  Some  critics,  however,  have 
called  it  his  best;  and  it  very  possibly  is  the  one  by  which 
he  himself  would  have  preferred  to  be  judged.  It  represents 
the  side  of  his  nature  in  which  he  himself  has  most  confi- 
dence. For  we  are  not  to  think  of  Clough  as  giving  himself 
up  by  choice  to  brooding  introspection.  He  was  always 
suspicious  of  that  habit  of  mind,  even  when  he  could  not 
escape  from  it.  He  coveted  action,  open  and  unreflecting 
enjoyment.  There  are  people  who  seem  to  be  born  with 
eyes  that  open  inward.  They  are  forever  on  the  watch  to 
see  how  their  inner  experiences  are  going  on,  and  live  with 
one  finger  always  on  their  spiritual  pulse;  and  they  seem  to 
take  a  dubious  kind  of  pleasure  in  this  personal  diagnosis. 
But  Clough  was  not  a  man  of  that  sort.  He  was,  indeed, 
always  liable  to  an  over-questioning  and  hesitant  temper; 
but  he  felt  there  was  something  morbid  in  such  a  temper, 
from  which  he  strove  to  escape  into  a  free  outward  life. 
He  did  not  enjoy  that  kind  of  poor  health.  He  was  fearful 
lest  the  healthy  glow  of  action  should  get  sicklied  o'er  with 
the  pale  cast  of  thought.  In  literature  he  preferred  the 
objective  depiction  of  the  outward  life — books  like  Walter 
Scott's — to  the  analytical  study  of  character  and  mood.  A 
great  admirer  of  Wordsworth,  he  yet  thought  Wordsworth 
over-reflective  on  trifling  occasion.  He  used  to  say  that 
such  lines  as 

To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can   give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears 

were  unhealthy,  because  they  implied  a  detachment  from  the 
larger  interests  of  mankind.  Accordingly,  when  he  wrote 
his  first  long  poem  for  publication,  he  turned  aside  from  all 
the  questionings  that  had  beset  him,  and  made  his  poem  a 
breezy,  open-air  story.  There  is  red  blood  and  bracing 
weather  in  it;  tramping,   swimming,   Highland  piping  and 


368  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

dancing,  and  an  uncommonly  genuine  bit  of  love  story  to 
end  with.  The  poem  is  full  of  the  rugged  charm  of  wide, 
heathery  moor,  misty  mountains,  bright,  cold  streams.  No 
poet  since  Scott  has  so  well  caught  the  atmosphere  of  the 
Highlands.  And  then — what  is  rather  surprising  in  pas- 
toral poetry — there  are  real  people  in  the  book.  This 
group  of  college  men,  with  their  robust  health  and  jolly, 
lazy  vigor,  their  confident  opinions  on  every  subject  under, 
heaven,  their  merciless  good-natured  satire,  their  exuberant 
sentiment  each  man  for  himself,  and  their  intolerance  of 
sentiment  in  everybody  else, — we  have  most  of  us  known 
them,  and  very  good  fellows  they  be !  Of  the  college  men 
the  foremost  is  one  Philip  Hewson,  "radical,  Chartist,  elo- 
quent speaker."  Philip  is  enthusiastic  and  sentimental, 
qualities  rather  winning  in  youth  when  enthusiasm  is  in  the 
blood  and  the  sentiments  are  not  yet  soured.  He  breaks 
his  heart  one  week  over  a  ferryman's  pretty  daughter; 
mends  it  quite  naturally  the  next  over  an  earl's  daughter, 
whom  he  vows  to  be  noble  enough  to  sacrifice  a  whole  gen- 
eration of  hodmen  for;  and  a  fortnight  later  does  really 
find  his  fate  in  the  Bothie  of  Tober-na-Vuolich.  Bothie  is 
Gaelic  for  a  laborer's  hut;  and  in  the  Bothie  of  Tober-na- 
Vuolich, 

on  the  blank  hillside  looking  down  through  the  loch  to  the  ocean 
There,  with  the  runnel  beside  and  pine  trees  twain  before  it, 

lived  David  Mackaye  and  his  daughter  Elspie.  Elspie  is 
one  of  the  living  women  of  modern  poetry.  She  is  rustiq 
enough  to  satisfy  Philip's  democratic  views,  but  she  isn't 
ignorant  and  she  has  a  crisp  originality  really  irresistible. 
Young  Alfred  Tennyson  was  writing  idyls  in  those  years, 
with  some  nice  girls  in  them,  doubtless;  but  after  his  Gar- 
dener's Daughters  and  Miller's  Daughters,  with  "dainty, 
dainty  waists,"  and  "jewels  at  the  ear,"  this  Miss  Elspie 
is  most  refreshingly  real.  Her  canny  prudence  and  delib- 
eration, her  Scottish  tendency  to  turn  over  in  her  mind  the 
proposal  of  her  lover  and  to  have  a  look  at  love  "in  the 
abstract" — it  is  all  quite  truthful  and  quite  delightful.    The 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH  369 

Bothie  throughout  is  that  rare  thing,  a  modern  pastoral 
without  a  touch  of  pretty  unreality.  Civilization  is  likely 
soon  to  make  such  poetry  impossible.  It  is  the  kind  one 
thinks  that  Clough  would  always  have  preferred  to  write, 
if  he  could.  But,  in  fact,  this  active,  unquestioning  life, 
content  with 

A  few  strong  instincts  and  a  few  plain  rules, 

was  never  possible  to  him.  He  might  admire  it,  but  he 
could  not  live  it.  And  thus  the  larger  part  of  his  verse,  and 
the  part  which  has  the  deepest  life  in  it,  comes  from  the 
skeptical  part  of  his  nature. 

That  term,  "skeptical"  is  in  bad  odor;  yet  in  strictness  it 
implies  no  moral  quality,  but  only  an  intellectual  one. 
Minds  like  Clough  find  it  hard  to  believe.  They  are  always 
asking  themselves  hard  questions,  and  they  are  not  satisfied 
with  anybody's  answers.  They  cannot  put  up  with  merely 
probable  conclusions  and  provisional  belief.  Most  of  us, 
if  we  find  ourselves  in  doubt  on  any  subject,  strike  a  balance 
of  probabilities,  as  well  as  we  can,  and  act  on  the  conclusion. 
We  learn  pretty  early  in  life  that  we  are  not  likely  to  attain 
a  perfectly  consistent  body  of  opinions  in  any  field  of 
thought,  and  become  shy  of  laying  down  any  more  general 
propositions  than  we  are  obliged  to.  We  know  that  we 
don't  know  much,  but  we  don't  worry  about  it.  It  is  not 
hypocrisy,  we  say,  this  attitude  of  ours,  nor  even  moral  in- 
difference; but  rather  a  healthy  recognition  of  the  limita- 
tions of  knowledge.  We  must  believe  something — at  all 
events  assent  to  something — or  we  cannot  get  on.  We  must 
do  it;  that  is  the  way  the  world  is  made. 

But  Clough  could  not  live  so.  It  seemed  to  him  a  kind 
of  dishonesty.  He  is  always  protesting  against  that  temper 
of  acquiescence  which  puts  by  our  obstinate  questionings 
with  answers  we  know  are  not  quite  correct,  or  gives  easy 
acceptance  to  half-truths  as  a  basis  of  action: 

O  may  we  for  assurance'  sake, 
Some  arbitrary  judgment  take, 


370  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

And  wilfully  pronounce  it  clear, 
For  this  or  that  'tis  we  are  here? 

Or  is  it  right,  and  will  it  do, 
To  pace  the  sad  confusion  through, 
And  say :  It  doth  not  yet  appear 
What  we  shall  be,  what  we  are  here  ? 

No  man  of  his  generation,  I  am  persuaded,  loved  truth 
more  intensely  than  Clough  did;  but  precisely  because  he 
loved  it  so  much  he  was  always  fearful  that  in  his  eagerness 
he  might  over-hastily  accept  something  as  truth  that  was 
not  true.  He  knew  that  there  is  rest  and  a  certain  stability 
given  to  the  mind  by  accepting  steadily  anything;  and  he 
was  apprehensive  of  a  temptation  to  believe  merely  from 
this  motive.  It  seemed  to  him  fatally  easy  to  substitute  a 
languid  assent  for  a  living  faith,  and  thus  to  slide  into  a 
religion  which  is  mere  use  and  wont,  and  that  that  was 
fatal  treachery  to  the  soul.  Whenever  his  verse  has  a 
satiric  edge, — as  it  often  has,  for  he  was  endowed  with 
a  humor  keen  as  well  as  buoyant, — the  object  of  his  satire 
is  usually  that  easy-going  temper  which  accepts  belief,  and 
would  accept  with  equal  readiness  disbelief,  at  the  dictates 
of  prudence  or  even  of  fashion;  the  good  people,  of  whom, 
to  say  truth,  there  are  too  many  in  the  world,  who  do  not 
really  fear  God  but  are  very  much  afraid  of  Mrs.  Grundy. 
The  great  World,  in  one  of  his  poems,  says  of  that 
story  of  the  Christ  whom  once  they  slew : 

His  wife  and  daughter  must  have  where  to  pray, 
And  whom  to  pray  to,  at  the  least  one  day 
In  seven,  and  something  sensible  to  say. 

Whether  the  fact  so  many  years  ago 

Had,  or  not,  happened,  how  was  he  to  know  ? 

Yet  he  had  always  heard  that  it  was  so. 

Thus  to  substitute  tradition  for  belief,  the  voice  of  form 
and  convention  for  the  convincing  evidence  of  truth,  this  to 
Clough  was  the  worst  dishonesty, — dishonesty  to  one's  own 
self.  Another  result  of  Clough's  habit  of  insistent  question 
was  the  paralysis  it  laid  upon  all  efficient  activity.    And  this 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH  371 

result  was  most  painful  to  one  naturally  so  eager  and  gen- 
erous as  he.  It  may  be  said  that  action  must  precede  faith, 
and  that  indeed  is  true;  but  such  a  nature  as  Clough's  finds 
itself  forced  to  ask  whether  the  belief  that  grows  out  of 
action  is  anything  more  than  convenient  assent  to  those 
conditions  found  essential  to  action.  Have  we  a  right  to 
believe  anything  simply  because  we  cannot  act  unless  we 
do?    As  the  doubter  in  one  of  his  poems  says, 

Action  will  furnish  belief — but  will  that  belief  be  the  true  one, 
This  is  the  point,  you  know. 

It  is  often  said,  also,  that  we  must  accept  with  such  grace 
as  we  can  the  limitations  of  our  knowledge  and  the  impos- 
sibility of  assured  faith,  and  then,  content  with  our  ignor- 
ance, go  on  to  do  our  duty.  And  Clough  tried  to  say  that 
too.  That  is  the  thought  of  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of 
his  shorter  poems,  The  Questioning  Spirit: 

The  human  spirits  saw  I  on  a  day 

Sitting  and  looking  each  a  different  way; 

And  hardly  tasking,  subtly  questioning, 

Another  spirit  went  around  the  ring 

To  each  and  each :  and  as  he  ceased  his  say, 

Each  after  each,  I  heard  them  singly  sing, 

Some  querulously  high,  some  softly,  sadly  low, 

We  know  not — what  avails  to  know? 

We  know  not — wherefore  need  we  know? 

This  answer  gave  they  still  unto  his  suing, 

We  know  not,  let  us  do  as  we  are  doing. 

Dost  thou  not  know  that  those  things  only  seem? 

I   know  not,  let  me  dream  my  dream. 

Are  dust   and   ashes   fit   to   make  a   treasure? — 

I  know  not,  let  me  take  my  pleasure. 

What  shall  avail  the  knowledge  thou  hast  sought  ? — 

I  know  not,  let  me  think  my  thought. 

•  •••  ••••• 

And,   when   the   rest   were  over  past, 

I  know  not.     I   will   do  my  duty,  said   the  last. 

Thy  duty  do?  rejoined  the  voice, 

Ah,  do  it,  do  it,  and   rejoice ; 

But  shalt  thou  then,  when  all  is  done, 

Enjoy  a  love,  embrace  a  beauty 


372  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

Like  these,  that  may  be  sought  and  won 
In  life,  whose  course  will  then  be  run; 
Or  wilt  thou  be  where  there  is  none? 
I  know  not,  I  will  do  my  duty. 

Beautiful,  indeed,  with  a  sad  nobility  of  resolve,  but  quite 
hopeless.  It  is  the  agnostic  theory  of  life;  and  it  cannot 
give  a  satisfactory  motive  for  action.  For  if  we  cannot  tell 
why  we  should  do  our  duty,  if  we  do  not  know  to  whom  it 
is  due,  we  may  soon  find  that  duty  itself  comes  to  be  nothing 
more  than  convention,  and  the  spring  of  resolve  breaks. 
So  Clougb  felt.  In  a  sequel  to  the  poem  just  quoted  he 
sees  the  human  spirits  once  again,  this  time  on  the  earth  in 
woful  case,  waiting  by  some  Bethesda  for  healing  from  the 
smitings  of  life.  And  with  them  now  that  one  who  spoke 
of  duty  once  before, 

Foredone  and  sick  and  sadly  muttering  lay. 

'I  know  not,  I  will  do — what  is  it  I  would  say? 

What  was  that  word  which  once  sufficed  alone  for  all, 

Which  now  I  seek  in  vain  and  never  can  recall  ?.' 

And  then,  as  weary  of  in  vain  renewing 

His  question,  thus  his  mournful  thought  pursuing, 

'I  know  not,  I  must  do  as  other  men  are  doing.' 

But  when  the  human  spirit  can  say  only  this  it  is  surely 
worsted  in  the  struggle  of  life.  Clough,  as  I  have  said,  felt 
it  a  fatal  dishonesty  to  accept  tradition  or  half-belief  for 
belief;  here,  on  the  practical  side,  he  felt  it  equally  dis- 
honest to  accept  mere  convention  for  duty.  This  is  the 
skeptic's  dilemma.  He  must  act  without  belief,  or  on  be- 
lief only  half  supported  by  evidence;  yet,  if  he  does  so  act, 
his  action  soon  degenerates  into  routine;  while,  if  he  de- 
clines to  act,  he  lets  occasion  go  by  and  wastes  his  days  in 
querulous  inefficiency. 

All  Clough's  minor  poems  are  the  record  of  his 
struggle  with  this  problem.  In  them  all  is  the  same 
candor,  the  same  generosity,  the  same  buoyant  and  active 
spirit  checked  by  a  mournful  hesitation.  They  have 
the  charm  of  entire  sincerity  and  a  certain  appealing 
earnestness,  and  they  have  high  poetic  qualities  as  well. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH  373 

For  Clough  had  the  native  sensibility  and  the  trained  judg- 
ment of  the  artist.  It  is  true  that,  in  general,  he  seems  too 
intent  upon  his  meaning  to  delay  long  over  his  form;  he 
likes  the  plain  truth  best.  Yet  in  these  lyrics  of  the  inner 
life  there  is  a  melody  and  movement  all  the  more  effective 
because  so  unstudied,  and  an  imagination  that  often  sends 
a  sudden  ray  into  the  subtlest  recesses  of  feeling.  And  now 
and  then  we  come  upon  one  of  them  which  shows  that  union 
of  perfect  grace  with  utter  simplicity  which  is  the  last  charm 
of  lyric  verse.  The  plaintive  music  of  such  a  poem  as  The 
Stream  of  Life  sings  itself  into  the  heart  at  once  and  for- 
ever. 

Two  longer  poems,  the  Dipsychus  and  the  Amours 
de  Voyage,  illustrate  the  same  struggle  to  escape  from  the 
alternatives  of  convention  on  the  one  hand  and  inefficiency 
on  the  other.  Dipsychus  is  a  kind  of  everyday  Faust.  The 
hero  (whose  name  means,  I  suppose,  the  man  with  two 
souls)  is  constantly  haunted  by  a  mocking  spirit  who  tempts 
to  submit  to  the  inevitable,  accept  the  half-belief  and  the 
conventional  action,  and  do  as  other  men  are  doing.  This 
is  Clough's  devil.  No  grimy  and  vulgar  specter,  nor  yet 
a  handsome  pander  to  the  lust  of  the  eyes  and  the  pride  of 
life,  but  only  an  elusive  spiritual  presence  that  Steals  behind 
our  most  earnest  purpose  with  the  well-bred  persuasive 
whisper  that  we  might  as  well  adapt  ourselves  and  make 
the  best  of  life: 

The  world  is  very  odd  we  see, 

We  do  not  comprehend  it; 
But  in  one  fact  we  all  agree, 

God  won't  and  we  can't  mend  it. 

Being  common  sense,  it  can't  be  sin 

To  take  it  as  I  find  it; 
The  pleasure,  to  take  pleasure  in; 

The  pain,  try  not  to  mind  it. 

Nowhere  in  modern  poetry,  so  far  as  I  can  recall,  is  there 
a  more  true  and  subtle  depiction  of  that  temper  of  world- 
liness   which   claims   a  monopoly  of  good  sense,   meets  all 


374  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

deep  questioning  with  patronizing  dissuasives,  and  con- 
fronts all  ideals  with  an  incredulous  lift  of  the  eyebrow. 
He  seems  not  altogether  evil,  this  Spirit  of  worldliness;  he 
would  only  take  things  as  they  are  and,  as  the  eighteenth 
century  preachers  used  to  say,  make  the  best  of  both 
worlds, — if  there  should  chance  to  be  a  second.  Nor  is  he 
without  his  own  views  on  religious  matters,  though  he  keeps 
them  mostly  to  himself.  Lord  Bolingbroke,  when  asked 
"What  is  your  religion?"  is  said  to  have  replied,  "The  re- 
ligion of  all  gentlemen."  "But  what  is  that?"  "That,  sir, 
is  what  no  gentleman  ever  tells."  This  Spirit  is  in  like  case. 
A  decent  conformity  he  is  ready  to  approve, — 

You'll  go  to  church  of  course,  you  know; 

•  ••••••• 

Trust  me,  I  make  a  point  of  that; 
No  infidelity,  that's  flat! 

But  to  moon  about  religion,  to  stand  agape  over  some  deep 
truth  only  half  apprehended  until  you  lose  your  grip  upon 
fact,  and  lose  the  taste  of  life,  this  to  the  Spirit  of  this 
world  is  the  crowning  folly.  Oipsychus  longs  for  some 
clear  knowledge  by  which  one  might,  as  in  the  olden  days, 
walk  with  God;  he  longs  for  some  clear  end  of  action  that 
may  draw  him  beyond  the  fringes  of  the  fight  into  the  pell- 
mell  of  men,  and  give  full  course  to  all  his  powers.  In  some 
happier  moments  he  does  have  transient  glimpses  of  help 
that  cometh  from  above;  but  with  every  better  impulse 
slides  in  the  fatal  whisper  of  the  Spirit  to  remind  him  of 
the  limitations  of  life  and  counsel  submission  to  the  present 
and  the  positive: 

Submit,  submit! 

Tis  common  sense,  and  human  wit 

Can  claim  no  higher  name  than  it. 

And  thus  Dipsychus  oscillates  between  honest  revolt  and 
tame  conformity,  until,  at  last,  the  poem  does  not  end,  but 
merely  stops;  as  if  the  poet  felt  that  to  such  doubts  there 
could  be  no  final  answer,  from  such  solicitations  no  lasting 
relief. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH  375 

The  other  of  these  two  longer  poems,  the  Amours  de 
Voyage,  is  a  study  of  skeptic  inefficiency.  The  character  of 
the  hero  is  indicated  in  the  motto  Clough  prefixed  to  the 
poem,  77  doutait  de  tout,  mime  de  I'amour.  He  is  a 
young  Englishman  who,  for  no  reason  in  particular,  finds 
himself  in  Rome,  for  the  first  time,  during  the  year  of  its 
siege  by  the  French. 

Rome  disappoints  me  much ;  I  hardly  as  yet  understand,  but 
Rubbishy  seems  the  word  that  most  exactly  would  suit  it. 

He  is  not  quite  certain  whether  he  is  interested  or  bored; 
but  the  place,  at  all  events,  holds  him  by  a  kind  of  indolent 
fascination.  In  a  few  weeks  comes  the  siege,  and  he  is 
tempted  to  join  the  patriotic  defenders  against  the  French 
invaders. 

Offer  one's  blood  an  oblation  to  Freedom,  and  die  for  the  Cause. 

But  he  cannot  trust  the  impulse  far  enough  to  obey  it.  He 
is  not  sure  that  he  is  called  on, 

Or  would  be  justified  even  in  taking  away  from  the  world  that 
Precious  creature,  himself.  Nature  sent  him  here  to  abide  here; 
.  .  .  Nature  wants  him  still,  it  is  likely. 

Meantime  he  meets  an  English  girl,  who  is  in  Rome  with 
friends  during  the  siege,  and  falls  into  what  would  seem 
very  much  like  love.  For  himself,  however,  he  cannot  quite 
be  sure  about  that,  either,  or  decide  whether  it  is  a  case  of 
love  or  only  a  case  of  juxtaposition: 

I  am  in  love,  meantime,  you  think;  no  doubt  you  would  think  so. 

I  am  in  love,  you  say ;  with  those  letters,  of  course,  you  would  say  so. 

I  am  in  love,  you  declare.     I  think  not  so;  yet  I  grant  you 

It  is  a  pleasure  indeed  to  converse  with  this  girl.     Oh,  rare  gift, 

Rare  felicity,  this!  she  can  talk  in  a  rational  way,  can 

Speak  upon  subjects  that  really  are  matters  of  mind  and  of  thinking, 

•  ••••■•  •  • 

No,  though  she  talk,  it  is  music;  her  fingers  desert  not  the  keys;  'tis 
Song,  though  you  hear  in  the  song  the  articulate  vocables  sounded, 
Syllabled  singly  and  sweetly  the  words  of  melodious  meaning. 
I  am  in  love,  you  say:  I  do  not  think  so,  exactly. 


376  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

He  dallies  and  hesitates,  fearing  to  take  an  irretraceable 
step  merely  at  the  dictates  of  accident  or  convention;  and 
he  vexes  himself  endlessly  by  reflection : 

Hang  this  thinking  at  last!  what  good  is  it?     Oh,  and  what  evil! 
Oh,  what  mischief  and  pain!  like  a  clock  in  a  sick  man's  chamber, 
Ticking,    and    ticking,    and    still    through    each    covert   of    slumber 
pursuing. 

If  he  had  been  left  to  himself  long  enough,  however,  he 
would  probably  have  drifted  into  a  proposal  at  last.  It  is 
the  natural  result  of  inertia  in  such  cases.  But  a  meddling 
relative  of  the  lady  ventures  a  word  with  him  about  his 
intentions  and  his  duty,  and  that  determines  him — in  the 
wrong  way.  It  would  surely  be  intolerable  to  be  pushed 
reluctantly  to  the  altar  by  a  man  who  wants  to  be  your 
brother-in-law.  He  flings  out  of  Rome  in  a  huff,  and  Miss 
Trevellyn  goes  to  Florence.  On  reflection,  however,  it 
occurs  to  him  that  the  lady  may  have  known  nothing  of  the 
ill-advised  intervention  of  her  friend;  and  as,  moreover,  his 
interest  persists  strangely  after  the  lady  has  gone,  he  conjec- 
tures that  there  may  have  been  something  more  than  juxta- 
position in  it  after  all,  and  decides  to  follow  her  and  find 
out.  But  a  series  of  perverse  accidents  sets  him  off  the 
track;  he  arrives  in  every  place  just  a  little  after  she  has 
left  it;  and,  at  last,  losing  all  clue  to  her  whereabouts,  he 
gives  up  the  search  with  a  kind  of  fatigue  of  will,  and  drops 
back  to  accept  the  inevitable : 

The  Fates,  it  is  clear,  are  against  us  ; 
.     Indeed,  should  we  meet,  I  could  not  be  certain  ; 
All  might  be  changed,  you  know     ...... 

Great  is  Fate,  and  is  best.     I  believe  in  Providence  partly. 
What  is  ordained  is  right,  and  all  that  happens  is  ordered. 
Ah,  no,  that  isn't  it.  But  yet  I  retain  my  conclusion. 

It  might  be  naturally  supposed  that  there  could  be  little 
interest  in  a  poem  concerned  with  the  hesitancies  of  such  a 
shilly-shallying  young  person  as  this.  But  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  interest.  For  the  persons  in  \tf  Mr.  Claude,  Miss 
Mary,    and   the    sister,   Georgina,    are   very   real   people. 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH  377 

Clough  had  the  art  to  make  you  acquainted  with  ordinary 
folk;  and  it  is  never  seen  to  better  advantage  than  in  the 
really  vivid  way  he  puts  before  us  this  lover  who  cannot 
pronounce  on  his  own  symptoms.  Nor  must  it  be  thought 
that  Mr.  Claude  is  merely  a  pretty  sentimentalist,  trying  to 
make  up  what  he  calls  his  mind.  On  the  contrary,  he  has 
Clough's  own  keen  penetration,  ripe  culture,  large  and  ob- 
servant sympathies.  His  talk  abounds  in  most  incisive 
comment  upon  men  and  things — art,  politics,  history,  re- 
ligion. Indeed,  his  indecision  is  due  in  part  to  this  very 
breadth  of  view.  There  is  some  truth  in  the  remark  of  the 
humorist,  that  one  must  have  a  great  deal  of  mind  when  it 
takes  so  long  to  make  it  up.  The  poem  is  saturated,  also, 
with  Clough's  peculiar  humor.  Clough  was  one  of  those 
men  of  whom  you  say  that  he  might  have  done  almost  any- 
thing; I  have  often  thought  that  there  were  the  possibilities 
of  an  excellent  satirist  in  him.  Satire  has  made  but  a  rather 
poor  showing  in  English  verse  since  the  eighteenth  century 
men  overdid  it;  but  such  a  poem  as  the  Amours  de  Voyage 
gives  a  hint  of  what  place  there  might  be  for  it  to-day. 
The  first  charm  of  the  poem,  however,  and  its  real 
purpose,  is  the  remarkable  depiction  of  the  hesitancy  and 
ineptitude  born  of  doubt.  I  have  said  that  the  Dipsychus 
might  be  called  an  everyday  Faust;  with  even  greater  fit- 
ness might  the  Amours  de  Voyage  be  called  an  everyday 
Hamlet.  Take  out  of  Hamlet's  story  its  large  circumstance 
and  its  sanguinary  catastrophe,  and  you  change  it  from 
tragedy  to  satire;  but  you  leave  Hamlet  unchanged.  His 
fatal  weakness  may  be  shown  as  well  in  the  drawing  room  as 
on  the  buskined  stage.    As  Mr.  Claude  says, 

Ah,  the  key  of  our  life  that  passes  all  wards,  opens  all  locks, 
Is  not,  /  unllt  but  /  must.     I  must, — I  must, — and  I  do  it! 

The  career  of  Clough  was  uneventful.  After  leaving 
Oxford  he  held,  for  a  time,  a  position  in  the  London  Uni- 
versity, where  no  religious  tests  were  required,  and  then,  in 
1852,  on  the  urgent  invitation  of  Emerson,  came  over  to 
America.     He  liked  the  atmosphere  of  intellectual  freedom 


378  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

he  found  in  Cambridge  and  he  won  the  intimate  friendship 
of  the  group  of  scholars  and  poets  there, — Emerson,  Long- 
fellow, Lowell,  Holmes,  Hawthorne,  Norton,  Sumner, 
Agassiz.  Lowell  in  his  memorial  poem,  Agassiz,  has  left  a 
loving  portrait  of  the 

Boy  face,  but  grave  with  answerless  desires, 

Poet  in  all  that  poets  have  of  best, 

But  foiled  with  riddles  dark  and  cloudy  aims. 

But  he  evidently  missed  somewhat  the  riper  culture  of  the 
old  world,  and  when,  after  eight  months  in  Cambridge, 
he  received  the  offer  of  a  place  in  the  Education  Office,  he 
accepted  it  and  returned  to  England-  This  position  he  held 
until  the  close  of  his  life.  But  his  career  was  cut  short  by 
disease;  he  died,  at  the  age  of  forty-two,  in  Florence,  and 
his  grave  is  in  the  little  Protestant  cemetery  there,  not  far 
from  that  of  Mrs.  Browning.  His  life,  one  thinks,  did  not 
allow  him  space  to  show  all  the  possibilities  of  his  genius; 
and  to  the  end  he  never  gained  that  steadiness  and  certainty 
he  craved.  All  his  most  characteristic  poetry,  as  we  have 
seen,  either  expresses  directly  his  own  personal  struggle 
with  doubt  or  depicts  the  benumbing  effect  of  such  doubt 
upon  practical  activity.  But  it  is  not  a  paradox  to  say  that 
this  poetry  is  healthful,  often  inspiring.  For  the  motive 
underlying  it  all  is  Clough's  unconquerable  love  and  un- 
wearied search  for  truth.  In  this  respect  his  work  is  in 
striking  contrast  with  that  of  his  friend,  Matthew  Arnold. 
The  two  men  were,  indeed,  in  some  essential  characteristics 
each  the  complement  of  the  other.  Clough  had  a  hesitating, 
deliberate  intellect,  underlaid  by  a  volume  of  buoyant  feel- 
ing; Arnold  had  a  clear,  decisive  intellect,  on  a  basis  of 
rather  languid  feeling.  Arnold  never  shared  Clough's  irre- 
pressible force  of  spirit,  Clough's  incessant  thirst  for  action, 
Clough's  genial  interest  in  men  and  women.  Arnold  had 
passed  through  much  the  same  period  of  doubt  and  ques- 
tion as  Clough,  and  his  poetry  is  the  record  of  it;  but  he 
had  reached  a  very  different  outcome.  To  Arnold  the  tem- 
per of  question  and  struggle,  even   after  the   truth,  was 


ARTHUR  HUGH  CLOUGH  379 

intolerable.  He  craved  calm  and  lucidity  of  mind.  His 
typical  poetic  mood  is  always  one  of  serenity;  mournful  it 
may  be,  but  unperturbed  and  self-contained.  He  cannot  en- 
dure the  doubts  that  harass  and  corrode;  he  faces  his  ques- 
tions; he  states  them  with  poignant  sincerity;  he  admits  that 
he  has  no  answer  for  them;  but  he  will  not  abandon  himself 
to  them.  Rather,  with  a  sad  Olympian  serenity,  he  turns 
away  from  them  all  to  the  tranquil  certainties  of  beauty  and 
culture.  He  stilled  his  own  questioning  by  turning  all  the 
supernatural  elements  of  religion  into  metaphor,  and  made 
for  himself  what  he  thought  was  a  kind  of  defecated  Chris- 
tianity; a  kind,  however,  which  could  hardly  have  satisfied 
or  convinced  any  rational  human  being.  But  Clough  would 
never  thus  put  aside  his  questions,  or  sink  back  into  the 
temper  of  acquiescence.  He  was  loyal  to  the  demands  of 
his  own  better  nature;  obedient  to  his  own  deepest  sense  of 
spiritual  need.  Though  the  truth  seemed  beyond  his  ken,  he 
would  never  abandon  the  quest;  least  of  all  would  he  refuse 
to  believe  there  is  truth.  Few  nobler  lines  were  ever  written 
than  the  couplet  from  one  of  his  lyrics, 

It  fortifies  my  soul  to  know 

That,  though  I  perish,  Truth  is  so. 

It  is  this  undaunted  belief  in  high  things  yet  unproved  that 
makes  his  verse,  in  spite  of  its  doubt,  healthy  and  inspiring. 
Surely  it  is  nobler  thus  to  wrestle  till  the  morning,  though 
folded  in  mystery  and  goaded  by  pain,  than  to  give  up  the 
struggle  in  placid  indifference.  Such  a  striving  soul  can 
never  really  know  defeat,  but  finds  still  in  its  darkest  mid- 
night some  assurance  of  victory  and  light.  Clough's  last 
poem,1  written  on  his  deathbed,  breathes  the  spirit  of  his 
whole  life  and  has  poured  new  courage  into  thousands  of 
fainting  hearts : 

Say   not  the  struggle  nought  availeth, 
The  labour  and  the  wounds  are  vain, 

The  enemy  faints  not,  nor  faileth, 
And  as  things  have  been  they  remain. 

'Dated     1849;    tee    Prote    Remains,    London,    1888,    p.    55,    or    hi*    wife'i 
Memoir,  Poems  and  Prose  Remains,  London,  1869,  I,  p.  53.     [L.  B.  G.] 


380  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

If  hopes  were  dupes,  fears  may  be  liars ; 

It  may  be,  in  yon  smoke  concealed, 
Your  comrades  chase  e'en  now  the  fliers, 

And,  but  for  you,  possess  the  field. 

For  while  the  tired  waves,  vainly  breaking, 
Seem  here  no  painful  inch  to  gain, 

Far  back,  through  creeks  and  inlets  making, 
Comes  silent,  flooding  in,  the  main. 

And  not  by  eastern  windows  only, 

When  daylight  comes,  comes  in  the  light, 

In  front,  the  sun  climbs  slow,  how  slowly! 
But  westward,  look,  the  land  is  bright. 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC 

IN  this  age  of  tumult,  when  so  many  old  ideals  are  shat- 
tered and  so  many  new  ones  proved  false  or  futile,  it 
is  probable  that  there  may  be  but  little  interest  in  the 
work  of  an  obscure  New  England  thinker  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Yet  the  impartial  critic  will  sometimes  look  back- 
ward with  a  certain  regret  to  that  older  day,  between  1830 
and  1880,  and  admit  that  he  finds  then  more  original  think- 
ing and  more  good  writing  than  in  any  other  similar  period 
in  our  literary  history.  Among  the  group  of  thinkers  who 
made  those  years  memorable  a  distinctive  position  must  be 
accorded  to  Bronson  Alcott;  he  was  preeminently  our  New 
England  mystic. 

Mysticism  is  foreign  to  our  practical  American  temper. 
We  demand  that  our  knowledge  shall  be  clear  and  definite. 
Some  profound  and  familiar  truths,  indeed,  we  accept  on 
their  own  evidence,  confessing  that  they  are  not  susceptible 
of  clear  statement  before  the  understanding.  We  know 
that  we  only  disguise  our  own  ignorance  in  such  words  as 
"force,"  "being,"  "spirit."  But  we  are  content  to  use  them 
without  clear  definition  and  are  impatient  of  any  attempt 
to  fathom  their  meaning  by  any  process  of  introspection. 
The  mystic,  on  the  contrary,  cannot  rest  satisfied  with  the 
admission  that  such  transcendental  truths  are  beyond  the 
grasp  of  our  intellect;  to  him  they  seem  precisely  the  kind 
of  truths  best  worth  knowing.  He  is  constantly  striving 
after  some  higher  mode  of  knowledge,  some  spiritual  ap- 
prehension, something  which  he  may  experience  though  he 
cannot  express.  He  often  finds  his  highest  satisfaction  in 
a  mental  state  that  transcends  pure  intellectual  apprehen- 
sion, and  delights,  like  old  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  to  lose  him- 
self in  mystery  and  pursue  his  reason  to  an  O  Altitudo! 

381 


382  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

This  was  certainly  true  of  Alcott.  He  was  obsessed  by  one 
or  two  great  truths  and  spent  his  life  trying  to  utter  them. 
He  talked  like  an  oracle,  talked  endlessly,  and  his  listeners 
felt  for  the  hour  as  if  in  the  power  of  some  strange  inspira- 
tion. And  the  better  the  listener,  the  more  potent  this  in- 
fluence upon  him.  Yet  he  never  was  able  to  reduce  this 
high  Delphic  talk  to  plain  statement  in  print.  "Alcott  has," 
said  Emerson,  "the  greatest  passion  both  of  mind  and  tem- 
per in  his  discourse;  but  when  the  conversation  is  ended,  all 
is  over."  Other  thinkers,  like  Coleridge,  have  influenced 
their  contemporaries,  as  Alcott  did,  mostly  by  personal 
interviews  and  conversation;  but  Coleridge,  though  he  never 
elaborated  any  philosophical  system,  did  leave  a  body  of 
writings  from  which  set  consistent  opinions,  philosophical, 
religious,  and  critical,  may  readily  be  educed.  When  you 
look  to-day  for  Alcott's  works,  however,  you  find  only  three 
or  four  thin  volumes,  like  the  Tablets  and  Table  Talk,  made 
up  of  gnomic  sentences  and  paragraphs  without  much  system 
or  connection.  It  is  perhaps  less  surprising  that  he  should 
have  found  difficulty  in  the  attempt  to  apply  his  ideas  in 
practice;  yet  it  was  the  dream  of  some  of  his  best  years  to 
do  just  that.  It  is  the  purpose  of  this  paper  to  give  a  brief 
account  of  his  two  principal  attempts,  with  some  indication 
of  the  philosophic  principles  that  prompted  them  and  the 
results  he  hoped  to  attain  by  them. 

Although  he  was  to  be  the  most  transcendental  of  New 
English  transcendentalists,  Alcott  was  not  one  of  the  New 
England  Brahmin  type.  His  birthplace  was  the  rural  Con- 
necticut town  of  Wolcott;  his  father  was  a  small  farmer; 
his  mental  training,  for  several  years  after  graduating  from 
the  cross-roads  country  schoolhouse,  was  mostly  gained 
while  working  in  Mr.  Hoadley's  clock  factory  or  peddling 
tinware  in  Virginia.  But  he  managed  to  read  a  good  deal 
and  to  think  more,  and  he  early  began  to  show  his  remark- 
able power  of  conversation.  Several  hospitable  Virginia 
gentlemen  found  him  no  ordinary  peddler,  and  welcomed 
him  to  homes  of  culture  where  he  found  good  books  and 
good  talk.     During  the  last  of  five  annual  visits  to  the 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC  383 

South  he  passed  some  months  among  people  of  a  yet  dif- 
ferent type,  the  Quakers  of  North  Carolina.  Here  he  read, 
during  a  long  illness,  the  writings  of  Penn  and  George  Fox, 
Barclay's  Apology,  Law's  Serious  Call,  all  of  which 
strengthened  and  fixed  the  mystical  tendency  in  his  thinking. 
It  was  two  years  later  that  he  found  his  career.  He 
taught  for  a  little  time  in  the  public  schools  of  Bristol  and 
Wolcott,  and  in  the  fall  of  1825  he  opened  in  the  adjoining 
town  of  Cheshire  a  school  of  his  own.  The  most  character- 
istic work  of  his  life  had  begun;  he  was  really  a  teacher  the 
rest  of  his  days.  At  first  this  Cheshire  School  differed  little 
from  the  ordinary  Connecticut  common  school  of  the 
period,  but  Alcott's  ideals  of  the  purpose  and  methods  of 
education  were  already  taking  shape,  and  he  at  once  began 
to  embody  them  in  his  school.  Two  great  principles  de- 
cided all  his  teaching:  first,  that  the  moral  culture  of  the 
pupil  ought  always  to  accompany  his  intellectual  training; 
second,  that  all  education  should  mean  the  bringing  out 
of  the  native  capacity  of  the  child,  or,  to  use  Alcott's  own 
phrase,  "the  production  and  exercise  of  original  thought." 
The  child  is  educated  not  by  what  is  imparted  from  without 
to  his  merely  receptive  mind,  rather  by  what  he  learns  for 
himself  and  from  himself.  In  accordance  with  these  prin- 
ciples the  teaching  in  the  Cheshire  School  took  the  form  of 
suggestive  and  interesting  conversation;  the  curiosity  of  the 
pupil  was  constantly  stimulated;  he  was  taught  to  define  for 
himself  the  meaning  of  all  words  he  used  or  found  in  his 
reading,  and  to  find  out  facts  and  truths — especially  truths — 
for  himself.  A  small  well-chosen  library  was  placed  at  his 
disposal.  Some  of  the  books  were  beyond  the  full  apprecia- 
tion of  children,  but  it  was  a  part  of  Alcott's  plan  always  to 
make  the  child's  mind  look  up.  In  the  government  of  the 
school  special  effort  was  made  to  develop  the  child's  sense 
of  personal  responsibility  and  the  power  of  moral  judg- 
ment. Two  superintendents  were  appointed,  at  intervals, 
from  the  pupils  themselves,  whose  duty  it  was  to  oversee 
the  schoolroom,  record  all  misdemeanors,  and  sometimes  to 
take  charge  of  the  room  in  the  absence  of  the  teacher. 


384  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

The  Cheshire  School  soon  attracted  the  favorable  atten- 
tion of  educators  not  only  in  Connecticut  but  in  adjoining 
states.  The  Boston  Recorder,  at  that  time  the  most  influ- 
ential paper  in  Boston,  in  the  summer  of  1827  quoted  a  Con- 
necticut writer  as  saying  that  Mr.  Alcott's  school  in  Cheshire 
was  "the  best  common  school  in  this  State,  perhaps  in  the 
United  States."  A  Society  for  the  Improvement  of  Common 
Schools  at  its  annual  meeting,  in  Hartford,  in  1827,  elected 
Alcott  to  membership,  and  appointed  a  Vc^mmittee  to  ex- 
amine the  principles  and  methods  of  the  new  school.  But 
while  there  were  flattering  notices  from  educational  experts 
there  was  growing  dissatisfaction  at  home.  It  is  not  easy 
to  introduce  new  ideas  into  an  old  community.  Plain 
Cheshire  folk  probably  looked  with  some  suspicion  upon 
such  a  departure  from  their  traditional  conception  of  what 
a  schoolmaster  ought  to  do  and  thought  the  new  sort  of 
education  their  children  were  getting  a  doubtful  substitute 
for  practical  drill  in  the  three  R's,  enforced  upon  stupidity 
or  laziness  by  the  occasional  use  of  the  birch.  Whatever 
the  causes,  confidence  in  the  school  declined.  The  number 
of  pupils  fell  from  eighty  to  thirty,  and  after  about  two 
years  of  trial,  Alcott  gave  it  up. 

But  he  had  by  no  means  abandoned  his  educational 
ideals.  His  story  for  the  next  half  dozen  years  is  the  record 
of  various  not  very  Successful  attempts  to  put  them  into 
practice,  and  in  1834  he  opened  the  famous  Temple  School, 
which  must  always  be  associated  with  his  name.  Several 
years  earlier  he  had  made  his  first  extended  stay  in  Boston 
and  gained  the  friendship  of  Emerson  and  Channing.  One 
day  in  the  summer  of  1828  he  writes  in  his  journal,  with 
fine  enthusiasm,  after  listening  to  a  sermon  by  Channing: 
"There  is  a  city  in  our  world  upon  which  the  light  of  the  sun 
of  righteousness  has  risen — a  sun  which  beams  in  its  full 
meridian  splendor  there.  ...  It  is  the  city  that  is  set  on 
high;  it  cannot  be  hid.  It  is  Boston,  whose  morality  is  of  a 
purer  and  more  elevated  kind  than  that  of  any  city  in 
America.  Channing  is  its  moral  teacher."  It  was  to 
Boston,  then,  that  Alcott,   after  two  rather  discouraging 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC  385 

attempts  in  Philadelphia,  resolved  to  return  for  his  last 
great  experiment  as  a  schoolmaster.  His  plan  had  the  sup- 
port of  a  number  of  eminent  friends,  Channing,  Emerson, 
Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hoar,  Mrs.  Lydia  Maria  Child,  Miss 
Bliss, — afterward  Mrs.  George  Bancroft, — and  the  Pea- 
body  sisters, — one  of  whom  afterward  married  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  and  another,  Horace  Mann.  The  third  sister, 
Miss  Elizabeth,  was  Alcott's  personal  assistant  in  the 
school.  He  secured  a  commodious  room  in  the  Masonic 
Temple,  and  opened  the  famous  Temple  School  in  Septem- 
ber, 1834,  with  thirty  pupils  from  three  to  twelve  years 
of  age. 

That  time  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  New  Eng- 
land thought.  The  most  prominent  figure  in  Boston  just 
then,  as  Alcott  saw,  was  William  Ellery  Channing.  Though 
a  Unitarian  in  theology,  Channing  was  a  transcendentalist 
in  philosophy, — our  first  transcendentalist,  as  a  recent  writer 
has  called  him;  "our  bishop"  was  Emerson's  phrase.  Two 
years  before,  in  1832,  Emerson  had  definitely  left  the  Uni- 
tarian pulpit,  and  two  years  later,  1836,  he  published  Na- 
ture, the  first  great  epoch-making  deliverance  of  the  new 
spiritual  philosophy.  In  the  same  year  was  held  the  first 
meeting  of  the  little  group  of  thinkers,  Emerson,  Hedge, 
Freeman  Clarke,  Ripley,  and  Alcott,  who,  with  wide  differ- 
ences of  individual  opinion,  were  so  far  agreed  upon  the 
supreme  importance  of  the  truths  that  transcend  mere  intel- 
lectual apprehension  that  they  could  not  repudiate  the  name 
applied  to  them,  The  Transcendental  Club.  Within  two  or 
three  years  more  some  dozen  others  were  more  or  less 
closely  associated  with  them, — Theodore  Parker,  Orestes 
Bronson,  Jones  Very,  Thoreau,  Margaret  Fuller,  and  in 
1840  the  movement  had  an  organ,  The  Dial,  edited  by  Rip- 
ley and  Margaret  Fuller.  Alcott  was  at  once  recognized  as 
in  some  respects  the  most  prominent  figure  of  the  group. 
It  is  probably  true,  indeed,  that  he  gave  inspiration  to  the 
movement  rather  than  any  clear  guidance  or  teaching.  He 
had  not  read  very  deeply  in  the  new  German  philosophy  of 
Kant,  Jacobi,  and  Fichte,  which  at  that  time  was  just  be- 


386  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ginning  to  filter  into  New  England  thought  largely  through 
the  influence  of  Coleridge;  his  teachers  were  rather  the 
Greeks, — Plato,  Pythagoras,  and  especially  Plotinus,  whom 
he  read  in  Taylor's  translation.  For  English  philosophy  he 
never  cared  much,  save  for  the  work  of  some  of  the  Cam- 
bridge Neo-Platonists,  like  Henry  More, — whom  he  greatly 
resembled, — and  for  Coleridge.  It  was  not  until  later  that 
he  became  interested  in  the  German  mystics,  like  Jacob 
Boehme.  But,  first  and  last,  his  reading  seemed  to  intensify 
the  few  convictions  he  held  to  be  primary  and  fundamental, 
rather  than  to  broaden  and  systematize  his  thinking. 
Margaret  Fuller  said  of  him  once, — "Alcott  has  only  a  few 
thoughts;  I  could  count  them  all."  And  a  hostile  critic  in 
a  Boston  paper  pronounced  his  series  of  Orphic  sayings  in 
The  Dial  to  be  mere  repetitions,  "a  train  of  cars  with  only 
one  passenger."  All  his  thinking  centered  about  the  two 
questions,  "What  am  I?"  and  "Whence  am  I?"  and  he  did 
not  always  see  the  difficulties  and  doubts  that  beset  those 
questions.  To  the  first  he  had  a  clear  and  positive  answer: 
I  am  Spirit,  a  person  that  thinks  and  loves,  and  wills,  en- 
tirely distinct  from,  and  separable  from,  this  "machine 
which  is  to  me,"  as  Hamlet  says.  So  much  we  know ;  though, 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  he  did  not  go  quite  so  far  as  Berke- 
ley in  denying  substantial  reality  to  body.  To  the  ques- 
tion, "Whence?"  his  answer  was  equally  positive,  but  not 
equally  clear.  He  could  not  conceive  of  the  human  spirit 
as  really  beginning  at  birth  any  more  than  as  perishing  at 
death.  Some  form  of  preexistence  is  implied  in  the  very 
idea  of  spirit.  Yet  he  would  not  dogmatize  on  the  subject,  or 
commit  himself  either  to  any  Oriental  schemes  of  transmigra- 
tion or  to  the  fantastic  assertions  of  the  mystics.  He  only 
held  that  what  we  know  as  our  spirit  must  in  some  sense 
come  from  the  Universal  and  Absolute  Spirit  we  call  God. 
Such  a  change  and  union  with  a  material  body  would  seem 
in  some  sense  to  be  a  descent;  he  often  called  it,  borrowing 
the  term  from  Plotinus,  "genesis  by  lapse."  This  notion 
of  the  origin  of  personality  was  at  the  foundation  of  Alcott' s 
theory  of  education.     If  our  spirit  came  from  the  absolute 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC  387 

and  perfect  Spirit,  it  would  seem  that  it  must  have,  at  least 
in  some  potential  form,  traces  of  the  perfection  of  its  orig- 
inal. "To  conceive,"  said  Alcott,  "a  child's  acquirements 
as  originating  in  nature,  dating  from  his  birth  into  his  body, 
seems  an  atheism  that  only  a  shallow  material  theology 
would  entertain."  He  held  that  the  familiar  passage  in 
Wordsworth's  Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality  is  not 
only  noble  poetry  but  the  truest  philosophy.  It  was  with 
this  conviction  that  he  opened  the  Temple  School. 

Here,  even  more  than  in  the  earlier  Cheshire  School,  it 
was  Alcott's  effort  to  bring  out  the  native  content  of  the 
child  mind.  The  attention  of  the  pupils  was  fixed  not  so 
much  upon  things  as  upon  thoughts.  In  the  two  afternoon 
hours  the  older  scholars  were  given  a  little  elementary  Latin 
and  practical  arithmetic,  but  all  the  forenoon  hours  were 
occupied  with  "conversations"  intended  to  educe  the  orig- 
inal, untutored  ideas  of  the  children.  Sometimes  Alcott 
would  give  out  lists  of  simple  words  to  be  spelled,  or  would 
spell  them  himself  to  make  sure  the  children  recognized 
the  words,  and  would  then  require  the  children  to  define 
them,  not  giving  any  formal  dictionary  meaning,  but  stating 
as  well  as  they  could  what  the  words  stood  for  in  their  own 
thought.  Different  statements  of  meaning  were  compared; 
sometimes,  when  the  pupil  merely  repeated  some  other 
word,  he  could  be  shown  that  he  had  at  the  moment  no 
definite  thought  in  his  mind.  The  words  were  sometimes 
names  of  sensible  qualities  often  used  figuratively  of  moral 
qualities  or  actions,  as  "black,"  for  example;  then  the  ques- 
tioning would  bring  out  the  native  sense  of  moral  analogy 
in  the  pupil,  at  the  same  time  directly  cultivating  his  imagi- 
nation. The  words  were  always  short  and  familiar:  but 
usually  the  most  familiar  words  are  the  most  profound, — 
names  for  what  everybody  knows  and  nobody  can  tell. 
It  was  precisely  Alcott's  theory  that  such  primal  conceptions 
as  "mind,"  "spirit,"  "know,"  "feel,"  "good,"  "bad,"  all  lie 
potentially  clear  in  the  child  mind,  and  that  he  should  be 
taught  to  recognize  them,  name  them,  and  perceive  their 
relations  to  conduct.     The  hours  of  every  Wednesday  fore- 


388  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

noon  were  given  to  "Conversations  on  Spirit  as  Displayed 
in  the  Life  of  Christ."  He  chose  the  life  of  Jesus,  partly 
because  his  life  and  sayings  are  familiar  and  accessible  to 
every  one,  and  partly  because  he  claimed — as  Channing 
did — that,  whatever  your  theological  views  of  Jesus,  you 
will  admit  that  He  retained  through  all  his  life  on  earth 
and  exhibited  in  all  his  actions  those  primal  spiritual  truths 
coming  from  God  that  are — as  He  said — revealed  unto 
babes,  but  are  too  often  beclouded  by  what  is  deemed  the 
wisdom  and  prudence  of  maturer  years.  In  1835  Miss 
Elizabeth  Peabody,  Alcott's  assistant,  published  with  his 
consent  a  full  account  of  the  school,  explaining  its  purpose 
and  methods,  and  giving  as  near  as  possible  a  verbatim 
report  of  some  of  its  most  interesting  exercises.  This  book, 
now  seldom  seen,  is  a  classic  in  the  history  of  education. 
Doubtless  many  readers  of  Miss  Peabody's  book  will  say 
of  Alcott's  teaching  that  he  was  trying  to  make  children 
think  upon  themes  inaccessible  to  the  thought  of  child- 
hood,— the  nature  of  spirit,  the  conception  of  God,  the 
ultimate  ground  of  duty,  the  rank  of  our  emotions;  in  a 
word,  that  he  was  trying  to  make  mystics  of  lads  and  lasses 
not  yet  in  their  teens.  In  reply  to  such  criticism  Alcott  al- 
ways reaffirmed  his  central  principle  of  the  primitive  per- 
ceptions of  childhood.  As  Emerson  put  it,  he  was  trying 
to  send  children  back  upon  themselves  for  the  answer  to 
every  question  of  a  moral  character;  to  show  them  some- 
thing holy  in  their  own  consciousness.  To  some  of  his 
critics  he  might  also  have  retorted  that  his  procedure  was 
wiser  than  that  of  the  Christian  people  who  merely  teach 
young  people  in  their  catechism,  and  thus  secure  an  idle 
assent  to  statements  corresponding  to  nothing  in  the  child's 
mind, — the  surest  way  to  produce  indifference  or  hypocrisy. 
It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  in  some  of  his  attempts 
to  secure  from  young  children  the  analysis  of  their  thought 
or  feeling  he  imposed  too  far  upon  the  natural  and  healthy 
reserve  of  the  child  mind;  especially  when  his  questioning 
touched  the  emotions  or  affections.  It  is  certain  that  such 
a  school  could  not  be  a  model  for  general  imitation ;  for  not 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC  389 

one   man   in   ten    thousand   would   be   competent   to   con- 
duct it. 

In  fact  the  Temple  School  soon  had  to  meet  adverse 
criticism.      Many  parents   began   to   think   their   children 
should  be  learning  a  little  more  Latin  rather  than  puzzling 
their  brains  over  juvenile  psychology.     Even  some  of  his 
friends  thought  Mr.  Alcott  too  visionary  for  a  practical 
schoolmaster.    The  first  pronounced  and  public  attack  grew 
out  of  his  Wednesday  morning  conversations,  which,   for 
some  time,  he  had  been  continuing  on  Sunday  forenoons. 
In    1836   and   1837   he  published   some  of   them,   in   two 
volumes,   as   reported  by  Miss   Peabody,   under   the   title, 
Conversations  with  Children  on  the  Gospels.     The  critics 
who   previously  had   known   little   or   nothing   about   Mr. 
Alcott's  work  woke  up  to  find  that  he  had  been  teach- 
ing  in   his   school   some    very   dangerous   philosophy    and 
religion.      The    orthodox    people    who    believed    in    the 
sturdy  doctrine  of  the  condition  of  every  man  wherein  by 
nature  he  is  inclined  to  only  evil,  "and  that  continually," 
found  a  very  dangerous  heresy  in  Alcott's  first  principles 
of   education;   and  many  who  could  hardly  be   accounted 
orthodox  felt  that  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  had  been 
rather  too  freely  used  to  support  the  freakish  psychology 
of  Mr.  Bronson  Alcott.    The  public  press  joined  in  the  out- 
cry, one  paper  quoting  the  verdict  of  a  Harvard  professor 
that  "one  third  of  Mr.  Alcott's  book  was  absurd,  one  third 
was  blasphemous,   and  one   third  was  obscene."      "Such" 
remarked   the   editor,   "will  be   the   deliberate   opinion   of 
those  who  diligently  read  and  soberly  reflect."     The  same 
paper,  on  another  date,  suggested  that  this  teacher  should 
be  brought  before  the  "honorable  judge  of  our  municipal 
court."    Alcott  himself  probably  never  had  any  intention  of 
supporting  or  denying  any  particular  doctrine  of  the  person 
of  Jesus;  he  was  only  drawing  from  his  life  such  lessons  as 
members  of  any  denomination  must  find  in  his  humanity. 
But  the  controversy  ruined  the  school.     He  had  opened  in 
1834  with  thirty  pupils  and  the  number  had  risen  at  one 
time   to   forty,   but  before   the  end  of    1837   it  had   fallen 


390  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

to  ten.  The  end  came  next  year  in  a  characteristic  way. 
He  had  admitted  to  his  school  a  colored  girl.  This  was 
too  much  for  the  respectable  citizens  of  Boston,  who,  a 
few  years  before,  had  dragged  Garrison  through  their 
streets  with  a  halter  around  his  neck.  They  protested; 
and  as  Alcott  angrily  refused  to  alter  his  ways,  they  took 
their  children  out;  it  was  insufferable  that  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  should  be  illustrated  in  the  psychology  of  a  negress! 
Mr.  Alcott  found  his  school  reduced  to  his  own  three  daugh- 
ters, one  other  white  child,  and  the  colored  girl,  and  he  shut 
up  the  doors.    It  was  in  June,  1839. 

The  whole  story  is  an  interesting  chapter  in  the  history 
of  education.  While  no  one  nowadays  would  approve  Mr. 
Alcott's  extreme  introspective  methods,  there  can  be  no 
question  that  his  school  had  considerable  influence  upon  the 
development  of  common  school  education  in  Massachusetts. 
It  is  significant  that  Miss  Peabody's  sister,  Miss  Mary 
Peabody,  afterward  Mrs.  Horace  Mann,  was  so  prominent 
in  the  discussions  on  common  school  education  for  the  next 
twenty  years.  Mr.  W.  T.  Harris,  the  warm  admirer  of 
Alcott  and  the  best  expositor  of  Alcott's  philosophy,  was 
superintendent  of  schools  in  St.  Louis,  president  of  the 
National  Educational  Association,  and  for  many  years 
chairman  of  the  Boston  Schoolmasters'  Club. 

In  the  next  half  dozen  years  there  is  little  of  external 
incident  to  record  in  the  life  of  Alcott.  After  the  failure 
of  his  school  he  removed  to  Concord  to  be  near  his  friends, 
Emerson,  Thoreau,  and  the  Ripley  and  Hoar  families. 
He  rented  a  house  with  an  acre  of  ground  and  pleased  him- 
self with  thinking  that  he  might  now  support  his  family 
in  simple  independence  upon  his  own  acre;  but  farming 
proved  less  interesting  than  philosophy,  and  no  more  lucra- 
tive. He  was  impatient  of  inactivity  and  seemed  passing 
into  a  pronounced  individualism,  doubting  the  value  of 
almost  every  established  institution.  In  1842  he  refused 
to  pay  his  town  tax  on  the  ground  that  he  could  not  sup- 
port a  government  not  based  upon  the  law  of  love.  Emer- 
son tried  to  persuade  him  to  put  his  philosophic  notions  into 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC  391 

print,  but  he  would  not  write.  It  was  not  until  the  spring 
of  1843  tnat  ne  found  opportunity  to  make  another  famous 
experiment,  this  time  by  founding  not  a  school  but  a  com- 
munity. 

The  story  of  the  Temple  School  had  got  over  to  Eng- 
land and  excited  so  much  interest  among  a  small  group  of 
educators  there  that  they  entered  into  correspondence  with 
Mr.  Alcott  and  named  for  him  a  school  they  were  estab- 
lishing near  London,  Alcott  House.  From  them  came  an 
urgent  invitation  that  the  Boston  philosopher  should  visit 
England  to  give  them  the  benefit  of  his  experience.  Emer- 
son and  a  few  friends  quietly  furnished  the  means  for  his 
passage,  and  in  May,  1842,  Alcott  sailed  for  England, 
"with  ten  sovereigns  in  his  red  pocketbook,"  says  Mr.  San- 
born, "and  a  bill  of  twenty  pounds  on  Baring  Brothers." 
He  was  in  England  through  the  summer,  holding  high  con- 
verse with  his  new  friends  on  all  topics;  and  his  enthusiasm 
was  so  contagious  and  convincing  that  when  he  came  back 
to  Concord  in  October  he  brought  with  him  three  of  them, — 
a  Mr.  Charles  Lane  and  his  son  and  a  Mr.  Wright, — with 
a  scheme  for  what  they  called  a  New  Eden,  to  be  planted 
in  a  region  more  hospitable  than  England.  They  talked 
endlessly  through  the  winter.  In  the  spring  Mr.  Lane,  who 
fortunately  had  one  thousand  pounds  to  venture  in  the 
enterprise,  bought  a  little  farmhouse  with  some  acres  of 
picturesque  but  not  very  fertile  land,  and  in  June  the  colo- 
nists moved  in.  Besides  Alcott  and  his  three  friends  there 
were  Mrs.  Alcott  and  her  four  girls,  and  within  two  or 
three  weeks  eight  other  members  had  joined  the  little  com- 
munity. There  were  never  at  any  one  time  more  than  a 
dozen  members  besides  the  Alcott  family.  The  farm  was 
located  in  the  town  of  Harvard,  about  thirty  miles  from 
Boston;  they  gave  it  the  attractive  name  of  Fruitlands. 

It  is  difficult  for  one  carrying  a  fair  amount  of  common 
sense  to  appreciate  the  purposes  and  hopes  of  the  Fruit- 
lands  enthusiasts.  The  best  account  of  the  plan  is  given  by 
Louisa  Alcott  in  her  half-humorous  story,  Transcendental 
Wild  Oats.     They  did  not  plan  a  large  community;  their 


392  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

ideal  was  rather  that  of  a  large  family.     Unlike  the  more 
famous  Brook  Farm  association,  organized  two  years  be- 
fore, Fruitlands  was  not  to  be  a  socialistic  experiment,  with 
certain  romantic  and  idyllic  attractions;  it  was  rather  almost 
monastic  in  plan  and  methods.    Alcott  and  Lane  hoped,  by 
abandoning  the  selfish  motives  which  govern  an  artificial 
society,  by  the  discipline  of  manual  labor  combined  with 
moral  studies,  by  the  exclusion  of  everything  that  might 
suggest  bodily  indulgence,  to  attain  soundness  of  judgment 
and  clear  spiritual  vision.     They  refused  animal  food,  not 
only  because  they  held  we  have  no  right  to  destroy  life, 
but  also  because  it  is  repulsive  and  degrading  to  eat  a  dead 
animal.     Even  milk  and  eggs  were  forbidden, — the  milk 
belonged  to  the  calf,  the  eggs  contained  the  promise  and 
potency  of  future  life.    Their  food  was  to  be  fruits,  grains, 
and  vegetables,  and  of  the  latter  they  preferred  those  that 
grow  upward  into  the  air,  not  downward  into  the  ground. 
The  ground  itself  was  to  be  fertilized,  not  with  manure, 
which,  said  Mr.  Alcott,  is  filthy  in  idea  and  practice,  a  base, 
corrupting,  and  unjust  mode  of  forcing  nature,  but  by  turn- 
ing under  growing  crops, — a  method  obviously  impracti- 
cable the  first  year.     The  reformers  objected  to  employing 
enforced  labor,  either  of  man  or  beast,  and  at  first  proposed 
to  prepare  the  land  for  planting  solely  with  the  spade ;  but 
as  that  was  found  to  be  too  laborious,  as  well  as  too  slow 
for  the  season  that  had  well  begun,  a  farmer  from  a  neigh- 
boring town,  who  was  a  kind  of  half-way  convert,  was  asked 
to  come  over  with  his  oxen — really,  one  ox  yoked  with  a  cow 
— and  plow  the  land  for  sowing.  Ample  provision  was  made 
for  intellectual  culture.     Mr.  Alcott  had  brought  over  from 
England  a  pretty  large  library  of  mystic  philosophy  and 
theology,  and  certain  hours  every  day  were  to  be  given  to 
reading  and  meditation,  accompanied  by  discussion  and  con- 
versations in  which  Alcott  was,  of  course,  the  leader.  There 
are  certain   indications,   indeed,   that  Lane,   who   was   in- 
clined to  be  despotic,  occasionally  intimated  that  more  man- 
ual and  less  spiritual  assistance  would  be  welcome. 

The  family  was  to  be  open  to  all  who  evinced  spiritual 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC  393 

sympathy  with   its  purposes,  but  there  were  no  additions 
after  the  first  month.     Some  of  the  brotherhood  were  very 
odd  characters.      One  of  them  had  once  been  in  a  mad- 
house and  was  pronounced  by  Lane  "still  not  a  spiritual 
being,  at  least  not  consciously  and  wishfully  so."     Another, 
one  Samuel  Brown,  convinced  that  most  of  the  ills  of  life 
are  due  to  the  enervating  effects  of  clothing,  troubled  the 
family  and  scandalized  the  neighborhood  by  casting  off  the 
linen  tunic  which  was  the  family  uniform,  and  walking  over 
the  hillsides  at  night  in  almost  Adamic  simplicity.     As  the 
season  advanced,  Lane  and  Alcott,   troubled  to  find  that 
some  of  the  family  were  leaving  and  no  new  ones  were  tak- 
ing their  places,  made  a  trip  to  New  York  in  search  of  re- 
cruits, but  they  got  none.    "The  number  of  really  living  per- 
sons among  the  three  hundred  thousand  inhabitants  of  New 
York,"  said  Lane,  "is  very  small."     So  long  as  summer 
lasted,  and  there  seemed  a  prospect  of  securing  sustenance 
from  the  kindly  fruits  of  the  earth,  life  at  Fruitlands  went 
on  in  a  high  and  hopeful  calm.     Alcott  especially,  as  his 
daughter  says,  "simply  revelled  in  the  Newness,  fully  be- 
lieving that  his  dream  was  to  be  beautifully  realized,  and 
in    time   not   only   little    Fruitlands,   but   the   whole    earth 
be    turned    into    a    Happy    Valley."      Perhaps    the    only 
skeptic  of  the  group  was  Mrs.  Alcott,  the  real  martyr  of 
Fruitlands.     But  as  cold  weather  came  on,  the  sky  changed. 
The  crops,  carelessly  planted  and  ignorantly  tended,  seemed 
likely  to  fail  altogether.    The  community  had  no  money  and 
no  credit.     One  after  another  the  members  left,  until,  by 
New  Year's,  only  Lane  and  his  son  were  left.     Lane  him- 
self now  began  to  blame  Mrs.  Alcott  for  lack  of  confidence 
in  higher  things,  and  blamed  Alcott  for  weakly  listening  to 
his  wife.     That  blame  was  unjust,   for  Alcott   never  con- 
sented to  give  up  his  scheme.     Finally,  when  even  Lane  and 
his  son  had  deserted  to  a  Shaker  community  in  an  adjoining 
town,  Alcott  in  despair  shut  himself  up   in  his   room   and 
faced  the  end.     For  days  he  would  neither  cat  nor  drink, 
while  his  faithful  wife  watched  by  his  side.     At  last,  one 
night,   too  feeble   to  rise,  he  consented  to  take   food,  and 


394  AN  OLD  CASTLE  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

next  morning,  in  the  chill  of  a  January  day,  the  reformer 
and  his  family  rode  on  an  ox-sled  to  a  hospitable  house 
nearby  where  they  remained  until  they  could  get  back  to 
Concord.  Lane,  anxious  to  recover  at  least  part  of  the 
money  he  had  put  into  Fruitlands,  sold  the  farm  and  re- 
turned to  England.  The  New  Eden  had  lasted  only  about 
seven  months. 

The  remainder  of  Alcott's  career  was  without  striking 
incident,  though  it  was  not  half  over.  In  Concord  he  came 
to  know,  as  he  had  never  known  before,  the  charm  of  home 
and  friends.  Emerson,  and  Hawthorne,  and  Thoreau,  and 
Ellery  Channing  were  his  near  neighbors;  Freeman  Clarke, 
and  George  William  Curtis  and  his  brother  Burrill,  were 
frequent  visitors.  In  such  companionship  he  lived  five  years, 
reading,  thinking,  talking  endlessly,  but,  except  for  a  few 
articles  in  The  Dial,  writing  nothing.  He  would  seem  to 
have  had  no  clearly  visible  means  of  support;  and,  probably 
for  that  reason,  in  1848  he  went  back  to  Boston,  where 
Mrs.  Alcott  found  employment  in  a  benevolent  society  and 
the  daughters  began  to  teach.  For  two  or  three  winters, 
following  the  example  of  Emerson,  he  gave  public  lectures, 
or,  as  he  preferred  to  call  them,  "conversations,"  in  a  num- 
ber of  Western  cities,  which  were  often  well  attended,  and 
proved  of  considerable  financial  assistance.  But  in  the 
summer  of  1857  tne  family  were  back  again  in  Concord, 
where  they  belonged.  The  remaining  twenty-five  years  of 
his  life  were  passed  in  a  high  serenity  among  his  old  friends. 
He  published  two  or  three  little  books  made  up  of  scraps 
of  his  reflections,  but  the  most  fortunate  work  of  his  later 
years  was  the  founding  of  the  Concord  Summer  School  of 
Philosophy,  which  gave  a  permanent  opportunity  for  that 
platonic  form  of  instruction  in  which  he  always  delighted. 
He  died  in  1888. 

It  is  not  easy  to-day  to  form  any  accurate  estimate  of 
Alcott's  influence.  If  he  had  any  consistent  scheme  of  philo- 
sophical opinions  he  never  put  it  into  print.  To  most  of 
his  contemporaries  he  seemed  a  curious  visionary,  with  no 
hold  on  practical  life,  obsessed  by  one  or  two  ideas  that  he 


A  NEW  ENGLAND  MYSTIC  395 

could  not  express  and  probably  did  not  himself  very  clearly 
understand.  His  daughter  Louisa  evidently  had  him  in 
mind  when  she  said  that  her  idea  of  a  philosopher  was  a 
man  up  in  a  balloon  with  his  family  tugging  at  the  ropes  to 
keep  him  down.  Even  his  admirers  were  forced  to  admit 
that  his  talk  seemed  sometimes  sheer  inspiration  without 
definite  intellectual  content,  and  now  and  then  voted  him, — 
as  Emerson,  in  a  fit  of  impatience,  once  did, — ua  tedious 
archangel."  Yet  we  must  remember  that  some  of  the  best 
minds  in  New  England  spoke  in  what  seemed  extravagant 
terms  of  this  man  and  of  their  obligation  to  him.  And  the 
few  ideas  which  he  was  always  trying  to  enforce  are  just 
those  ideas  that,  in  the  material  progress  of  the  last  seventy- 
five  years,  our  American  thought  has  most  needed  to  re- 
member. He  renders  no  small  service  to  mankind  who  can 
assert  with  high  and  convincing  confidence  the  one  great 
central  truth:  that  we  are  spirit.  After  all,  whatever  else 
they  may  have  said  or  written,  that  is  the  one  great  teaching 
of  the  leaders  in  English  philosophy  and  literature  for  the 
last  century, — Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Emerson,  Browning. 
Alcott,  whatever  his  limitations,  belonged  to  their  class; 
rendered  that  service. 


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